May The Dead Yet Live
by Sci-Fifan95
Summary: "Tali was found outside the farmhouse? Why wasn't that shared while I was in DC?" Director Elbaz pressed her lips. "I thought it unnecessary information."
1. Chapter 1

**What do you get with a tired me, a little bit of an annoying day, topped with an episode of NCIS that annoyed me further? This. And also lazy summaries. I should probably fix that... maybe.**

 **Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.**

* * *

"Tali was found _outside_ the farmhouse? Why wasn't _that_ shared while I was in DC?"

Director Elbaz pressed her lips. "I thought it unnecessary information."

Tony had to physically restrain himself from reaching across the desk and grabbing Elbaz by the throat. Even then, his mouth could not be so easily held back. "Oh, yes I understand that. I mean, who in their _right mind_ would want to be told the truth the first time around? Truth's what you want it to be, right?"

Elbaz tapped her fingers against her office desk, her black hair faintly illuminated by the rising sun from her office window. Had the window been made of glass that _couldn't_ withstand multiple RPGs, Tony would have been squinting.

He'd taken Tali and his father to Paris for a few weeks, stopped a few times along the way. Used all those sick days he'd accumulated at NCIS to pay for most of it. But now he was in Israel, his father and daughter back at their hotel while he got permission from Mossad to visit Ziva's farmhouse so Tali could give her old home a proper goodbye.

At least, that's what he'd been doing up until Elbaz dropped a bomb on him. Figuratively speaking, of course.

An actual bomb wouldn't have hit him so hard.

"I _was_ being truthful with you, Anthony," said Elbaz. "All I was doing was keeping it simple."

"No, you were _hiding_ details. _Important_ details. Tali couldn't have gotten out of that farmhouse without help. Someone took her from her room and brought her safely out. Someone I lo—"

Director Elbaz seemed to look straight into his mind with the look she gave him, interrupting him without saying a word. She leaned forward, arms on her desk, and gave Tony a grave look. "Ziva _is dead_ , Anthony. Please believe me when I say I would have never called Vance with that news if we were not 100% certain."

Even in his emotionally-charged state, Tony couldn't ignore the sincerity in her voice. He took a breath, let it out, then asked, "Then why lie to your media? Why the BS story about Tali being found in her intact room down the hall?"

A little voice in the back of his head had always questioned that. The house had been engulfed in flames when it made the news, and they didn't report on Tali being found until the flames had been put out. He knew the house wasn't big enough for another hallway to have been beyond the flames, not unless Ziva had Mossad build an addition. The initial blast would have destroyed half the house outright, and the rest would have been on fire for minutes by the time the cavalry arrived. Too long for a little girl to have survived.

A mask he'd seen Ziva use all too well appeared on the Director's face—a face that gave _too little_ away. It seemed everyone in Mossad had it. They didn't need to know Tony knew it meant they were hiding something. "It was just what was said in the moment. There was no reason to revise it."

Tony gave his cocky smile. One of his better ones that didn't quite quench the fire in his eyes. A mixture of anger and amusement. It worked like a charm on most criminals. It did nothing to the Director. "Then why are you lying to me?"

The mask stayed on Elbaz's face for a moment, then she let it crack. He saw an odd look in her dark eyes. "Because Ziva did not make Tali put away her toys."

All pain and anger fled from Tony for a moment. "What?"

"The mercenary Kort hired has a soft spot for children."

"So?"

Elbaz sighed. Not a heavy sigh—more like a soft breath being released. She took out a photo from her desk and showed it to Tony. It was a satellite image of Ziva's house; he recognized the orchard nearby.

"There is a hill right here," Elbaz said, pointing to a part of the image. "That is where we believe Kort's mercenary fired his mortar from."

"'Bout a hundred yards from the house."

"113, exactly."

"Not a long shot for a mortar."

"No. And definitely close enough for someone to see a child's training bicycle lying in the grass."

"So you're saying the merc went in the house—the house _he just mortared_ —on the slight chance he could save a little girl whose mother he just killed."

"We find it the most likely explanation."

"Then why hide it?"

"That mercenary is hated by the Palestinians even more than he is by us, and given the circumstances, that says much of their anger. An act of kindness on his part cannot, and will not, be celebrated by _anyone_ for _any_ reason."

"And you swear by this theory that Tali was saved by Kort's guy?"

"Anthony, it is not a theory. It is fact."

Tony's gut said otherwise. His mind was supplying him with other inconsistencies. Unanswered questions. Like how the mortar set fire to the farmhouse so quickly. It was an HE round. Made to blow things up. It set fire to things, sure, but not _that_ much. Not so quickly. Something was missing. "Unless Ziva was the one who saved her."

Elbaz sighed again. "Anthony…"

"Don't just dismiss it," Tony said, voice cold. Holding back his anger. "All you've done since you brought Tali to the States has been dismissing anything I say about Ziva."

"Because it's impossible. We have her body, Anthony."

"You haven't shown it to me."

"That is because I want to spare you the… Glory details?"

Tony stilled at the Ziva-like question in the Director's voice. She'd never been able to get idioms right. Maybe it was an Israeli thing. "I investigated crime scenes for twenty years. I can take it."

Tony didn't like the pity in Elbaz's eyes. "It is different when it is someone you love."

Gibbs had said something similar when Tony asked him about the details during one of his calls to DC. Tony didn't care—he needed to know. "Tell me."

The Mossad Director was silent a moment, then nodded. "We found her in her in what remained of her bed. We believe the mortar… Hit her directly. There was not much for us to find. Only bone fragments of someone who stood between five foot six and five foot ten. Ziva was five eight."

"And that range covers a couple _billion_ other people on the planet."

"Anthony. It _is_ her. How can it not be? She never would leave Tali alone and out in the night, and even if she did why has she not made contact since? We have record of the mercenary sending word to Kort well after we were on the scene, and in it he expresses outrage at Kort for not telling him of Tali."

Tony's rational mind came back to him, albeit regretfully. He knew it didn't make sense for Ziva to have lived, but leave Tali behind. Ziva had a steely exterior, but he knew she was gooey when it came to kids. She probably had been an incredible mother to Tali.

He wished he'd been able to see if he was right or not about that.

"I know," he finally said, quietly. "I… I just…"

"You don't need to say it," Elbaz said. "I went through the same with Eli."

Tony really wanted to snort at that. No she hadn't. She and Eli hadn't married. They hadn't had children together. They hadn't been together in years at the time of Eli's death. She knew nothing about what he was going through.

Nothing.

"Do we have permission to head out to the farmhouse?" He asked, doing the best to keep his sudden anger to himself. Best way to do that would be to end this little meeting.

Elbaz nodded. "Of course. We've left it as it was when the fire was put out. Go bring some peace to your daughter."

"Thank you." Tony stood up and walked to the door without another word.

Elbaz said nothing of the impolite exit.

* * *

His daughter was so peaceful when she slept.

He watched from the door as Tali held one of her favorite stuffed animal close to her chest, head barely visible in the depths of her pillow. She was exhausted following their visit to the farmhouse. What remained of it.

All that stood of the farmhouse were burned walls. They'd found that kids bicycle Elbaz had talked about. Tali had been so excited to see it again… But it broke his heart to hear her call "Ima!" again and again, as if expecting Ziva to be waiting right around the corner.

But it had been a good trip overall. A few of Tali's toys had survived the fire, and now they would be coming back with them to Paris. Tali had been sad when they couldn't find her favorite toy—what she kept calling Gibbs. Ziva seemed to have named many of Tali's favorite toys after them.

"You made one great-looking kid, Anthony."

Tony turned his head at his father's hushed whisper. Senior was looking into the bedroom with a wide grin, his aged eyes shining in the dim light. He looked happier than Tony ever remembered him being.

"She gets it from her mother," Tony said.

"She does, but her eyes. I still can't get over her eyes. Such beautiful eyes."

"You saying my eyes are a wonder to the world, Dad? Thanks."

Senior chuckled. "You know what I mean, Junior. The eyes are the windows to the soul, and your daughter has a beautiful soul. Innocent to the world's horrors, even after what's happened. When she's all grown up, think back on these times. Think back to when it was just you and her and one day at a time."

Tony planned to.

"Well, I should be getting to bed," Senior said. "When you're my age, your body doesn't appreciate staying up 'til midnight after a long day like we had. Goodnight, Tony."

"Night, Dad."

Tony stood in the doorway for a few more minutes after Senior retired to his own room. Tony couldn't get his gut to stop telling him he was missing something. Something important that, if he saw it, would fill the hole in his heart. The hole in Tali's heart that would become more and more obvious as she grew up.

Ziva.

Even as he stood there, he couldn't escape the horrifying thought of Tali running to him for comfort after having a nightmare. Only for him to be unable to find the right words to sooth her. To be unable to calm her with some song only Ziva had known.

How long would this happiness last before it came crashing down? How long until Tali finally realized her mother wasn't coming back? What would he do when that happened? How could he help her then?

Tony sighed and stepped away from the door. He stepped over to his makeshift bed—the hotel room couch—and started preparing to join the rest of his family in sleep.

The unexpected knock at the door caused him to instinctively go for his gun. But of course, he came up empty; he didn't have a gun anymore. He wasn't an Agent anymore.

The panic that had flooded him faded away at that thought. He wasn't in NCIS anymore. He wasn't on a case. He was in one of the nicest hotels in Tel Aviv, courtesy of Director Elbaz. He wasn't about to be attacked.

But old habits died hard.

Tony let himself relax and tip-toed to the door. Out of habit, he looked through the peephole. One of the staff he'd seen on shift when they came back a couple hours ago. He was holding a package in his hands.

Tony unlocked the door and gave the employee an expecting look.

"Forgive me for disturbing you, Mister DiNozzo," the employee said, his English almost flawless. The hotel staff really was something else. "But this package came for you a few moments ago. Its courier said it was to be delivered as soon as possible."

That sounded suspicious. Tony eyed the small cardboard box in the other man's hands. It had been sealed with tape, but that tape had been cut. "You open it?"

"This is Israel, Mister DiNozzo. We cannot be too careful with small and unusual boxes sent to our guests."

"Fair enough. I owe you a tip or something?"

The man smiled. "Your mysterious financier has taken care of any expenses of yours. As you American's say, this one is on the flat."

Yeah. Definitely an Israeli thing. "It's house. And flat is a British term." Tony graciously took the box from the man. "Thank you."

"Enjoy your night, sir," the man said just as Tony closed the door.

Tony stepped back into the room and sat down on the couch. He opened the box, and was met by the sight of a stuffed lion. It had clearly been homemade, but its quality was impressive.

Part of its face was burned.

"Gibbs!"

Tali came running out from her room, apparently woken from her sleep by him answering the door, and wrapped her little arms around the lion. She started talking to the stuffed animal, Tony's still-limited experience with Hebrew not letting him keep up with his daughter's rapid, excited speech.

He didn't pay attention to it.

In the bottom of the box was a piece of paper. On that paper was a note written in English handwriting that was beautiful and graceful in style. Like it was an echo of the writer.

 _Tony,_

 _This is Gibbs. He is Tali's favorite. She loves it when she is told stories about how he is the hero who saves the day. Make sure you tell her at least one story every other day._

 _There is more that I have yet to end. Until I do, keep her safe. Keep her close. Don't let her out of your sight._

 _I love you,_

 _Z—_

* * *

 **Yup, got nothing else. Sorry if it's really not good; it's 3:00 in the morning. I seem to write all my one-shots at three... Huh.**

 **Anyways, thanks for reading.**

 **See you soon.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Holy crap this got a _lot_ more attention than I ever thought it would! Because of that, I can't even properly respond to all you guests! All I can do is say that I have read all of your comments, I thank you for them, and I hope you enjoy this! It took me longer to write than the first chapter due to a few factors. The most important is this is actually only one of five projects I have going on right now, one of which is an original novel. So updates will not come exceedingly quickly.**

 **Also, I must warn all who are reading now: I am not a fuzzy writer.**

 **My original update might have been happy, but my natural style is dark and serious. If I am going to continue this, there may or may not be a lot of bad things going down before we get that happy ending. So with that in mind, to chapter 2.**

 **Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.**

* * *

"Slow down, DiNozzo."

" _She's alive, Boss."_

Gibbs flipped the switch on the elevator, stopping his ascent into the Squadroom. He had two Petty Officers who'd been shot and killed at the apartment they shared. He didn't need this right now—Tony calling him up to talk about his theories and suspicions about Ziva. Gibbs had his own, but he needed Tony to heal before bringing them up. Talking about them now could hurt Tony more, if Gibbs ended up being wrong.

That certainly wasn't stopping DiNozzo from coming up with his own answers.

"We've been over this a few times already, Tony," Gibbs said.

" _She made contact,"_ Tony replied, voice slightly fuzzy since Gibbs was in the elevator. Its metal walls liked to interfere with the signal, or so Tim said. Gibbs didn't care about the specifics.

"You've said that. How?"

" _A note. Ziva's handwriting."_

"In grief we see the things we want to. You did in Paris when you told me you saw Ziva walking by on the street."

" _This time it's not just some local with the same hair color. This note came with a stuffed animal, Gibbs._ Tali's _stuffed animal. Her favorite. The note explained how often I should tell Tali stories with it."_

 _That_ was definitely not a detail an outsider would know. "You the only one who read it?"

" _I'm not crazy, Boss."_ Gibbs felt a surge of pride when Tony said that, seeing right to the heart of the question. _"I had Senior look it over, too. Says it's exactly as I read it out."_

"Exactly?"

" _Right down to saying she loves me."_

Gibbs' gut pushed him to act. To storm into the Squadroom, demand everyone's attention, and have them start looking for leads on a dead woman. But he didn't. And he couldn't. He needed to find who killed those Petty Officers and why.

He couldn't drop the case. Nor could he ignore what Tony was saying.

"Okay," he said. "What else did it say?"

" _Something about having more to end. And that I should never let Tali out of my sight."_

Cryptic, yet protective. Much like Ziva had been in life.

Or _still was._

"Where are you staying?" Gibbs asked.

" _The Ritz-Carlton,"_ said Tony.

A five-star hotel. Frequented by people with lots of money. Mossad was certainly generous. "Don't leave that hotel, Tony."

" _What are you thinking, Boss?"_

"I'm thinking I need coffee."

Gibbs hung up and started the elevator again, mind running through what he knew. Ziva had been hit directly by an HE mortar while she slept. Her death had been an unforeseen consequence of Trent Kort's quest to destroy evidence that proved he sold nuclear secrets. Her daughter and Tony's, Tali, had survived the explosion and the fire that resulted because the mortar had hit the other side of the house. Tony had left NCIS to take care of Tali.

Tony had received a note by someone claiming to be Ziva.

The information within the note could have only come _from_ Ziva.

There were a lot of missing pieces to this. Pieces that part of Gibbs didn't even think existed. His gut kept bringing up the parts of Ziva's death that didn't make sense.

Tali couldn't have survived that fire. Not for as long as Mossad said. Gibbs had once burnt chicken he was cooking in the oven when Kelly had been Tali's age. The smoke had left her in a coughing fit, and he and Shannon had to take her to the ER. Tali had been perfectly healthy when she arrived.

The farmhouse couldn't have been consumed in an inferno like he'd seen in so short a time. Someone had to have used an accelerant to speed up the process, but the tests Mossad gave them were negative for accelerants.

The body found inside the wreckage was unidentified. Too badly destroyed to be, even for a gender. Someone who stood five six to five ten. Mossad said it was Ziva based completely on how the body's pieces had been found in what remained of her bed.

Something was missing.

The elevator door opened to the Squadroom. Gibbs stepped out at his usual brisk pace and entered the Bullpen. "Whadda do you got?"

"Boss," Bishop said as he walked by, hanging up her desk phone. "According to their superiors, Johnson and Bradley were both unusually jumpy for the last week."

"Jumpy?" Gibbs asked.

"Nervous. On edge. Sus—"

"I know what jumpy means. They say why?"

"Just that it was unusual for both of them."

"I might," said McGee, typing at his computer. Two documents came up on the monitor between McGee's and what used to be Tony's desk. "In the last six months, nearly $130,000 appeared in the personal accounts of both Petty Officer Johnson and Petty Officer Bradley."

"That's _a lot_ of money for a couple E-4 programmers," Bishop said. "But by all standards, they were highly skilled in what they did. Contract work on the side?"

"Nothing in their apartment gave any indication they'd done work for any companies or organization. The last time either of them worked outside the Navy, they were at the same Department Store in high school."

"Loans from relatives?"

"Accounts used to transfer the funds are untraceable. Didn't come from family."

"So where did they get that sort of cash?"

Gibbs stared at the images of the two dead Petty Officers—Johnson a tall African-American with a smile that could light up a room, and Bradley an average-sized Caucasian with intense green eyes that could chill the same room. Best friends since kindergarden. Both top-of-the-class in college. Both tested highly in Marksmanship, Hand-to-Hand, and Leadership. Both considered by their coworkers as dependable, loyal, and model Petty Officers.

Both hiding something from the rest of the world.

His gut was still trying to figure it out.

"Gibbs."

Gibbs looked up. Vance at the railing at the second floor, looking down into the Bullpen. The Director had his best stern face on. "MTAC. Now."

Gibbs narrowed his eyes. Why was was calling for him at MTAC? He didn't have any cases that involved Top Secret information, or cases that required communication across the world or with other agencies.

"Boss?" McGee asked. He looked as confused by the summons as Gibbs was.

Gibbs just gave him a look. "Find out how our Petty Officers got their money."

Vance had already entered MTAC by the time Gibbs ascended the stairs. He brought his eye to the retinal scanner, and opened the outer door when it opened for him.

He stepped forward, opened the inner door, and entered the room.

Then he found out why he'd been summoned to MTAC.

The main screen displayed a webcam of Mossad Director Elbaz sitting at her desk. She did not look happy.

"Director Elbaz was just informing me of how you've been encouraging DiNozzo's bad habits," said Vance, wearing his political face. He had a good one. Gibbs only knew Vance wasn't angry because they'd been working together on an everyday basis for eight years.

Gibbs walked into the center of the room and faced Elbaz's image. "Mossad listening to my phone calls, now?"

" _Only former Agent DiNozzo's,"_ Elbaz said, her form dark. It was the middle of the night in Tel Aviv.

"There a reason _why_ you're spying on one of my people?"

" _He's not one of yours anymore, Agent Gibbs."_

"NCIS protects their agents, both current and former," said Vance.

Elbaz raised an eyebrow. _"Are you changing sides, Director Vance? Was it not_ your _idea to monitor Anthony after he left your agency?"_

Gibbs sent a look Leon's way.

"We've lost a lot of former agents, Gibbs," Vance said, defending himself against the accusation Gibbs hadn't said. Gibbs loved and hated how easily Vance could read someone. Especially when he was the one being read. "I'm not going to let DiNozzo become a statistic."

"You're making sure he doesn't go after the hired gun who destroyed the farmhouse."

" _Exactly,"_ said Elbaz. _"And you're going against that by encouraging DiNozzo to keep holding onto the theory she survived."_

Gibbs' eye twitched. An ever-so-small movement that didn't show up through a webcam, but Gibbs knew Vance noticed from the way he raised his head up from the slight forward angle it usually was. "You listen to our entire conversation, Director Elbaz?"

" _We did."_

"Then why haven't I heard anything about the note DiNozzo told me about." It wasn't a question.

It was a _demand_.

Elbaz shook her head. _"Agent Gibbs, you cannot_ honestly _be considering that note as authentic."_

Vance frowned. "What note?"

Gibbs quickly filled Vance in on the package delivered to DiNozzo, and the note within it.

Vance's frown deepened. "Why didn't you tell me about this note, Director?"

" _Because it cannot be authentic,"_ Elbaz said, shaking her head again. _"Believe me when I say I'd have half of Mossad out looking for her if I thought that note was real."_

"It has information in it that only Ziva would know," Gibbs said. He wasn't ready to believe she was alive, but he felt he couldn't let Elbaz dismiss it. There was something both NCIS and Mossad were missing, and they both needed to find it. Not one, Not the other. _Both_. That was what his gut was screaming at him.

" _It is very vague. There are a dozen people over here who Ziva asked to help her with Tali at some point. Any of them could have written it."_

"And why would they write it? What good would they get from posing as Ziva?"

Elbaz shrugged. _"Unknown. I am going to be investigating the matter tomorrow."_

"You mean interrogating your own people."

Elbaz shrugged again. _"We are Mossad, Agent Gibbs. We don't hold back, not even with our own."_

"But only when there's a good reason," Vance said. "Would this qualify as such an occasion?"

Gibbs' eye twitched, and he gave Vance a look. But then he caught the barely-noticeable signal from Vance. The slight twitch of his right eye that looked like a wink. Gibbs knew then to take a step back.

Vance had an angle.

" _In the years she spent at her father's farmhouse, Ziva became one of my dearest friends. Almost like a daughter to me,"_ Elbaz said, and Gibbs knew she meant it; the signature Mossad poker face had vanished. She was being genuine. _"Whoever is_ daring _to use her memory to play games with DiNozzo needs to understand the_ weight _of my displeasure."_

"Sounds like you want to get to the bottom of that note as much as DiNozzo."

" _I do."_

Vance gave the wink-signal again, and by now, Gibbs knew what he wanted Gibbs to say. "Then why not cover all your bases?"

" _What are you asking?"_

"That NCIS and Mossad run a cooperative investigation into this note's origins," Vance said. "With you investigating whether the note came from Mossad, while we investigate the possibility that Ziva David is still alive."

Gibbs caught the flair of Elbaz's nostrils. The sudden coldness in Elbaz's eyes. She was angry. _"Absolutely not. Ziva David is_ dead _. I buried her weeks ago. She is gone."_

He could tell she was genuine, but his gut still said there was something they were all missing. Something _more_. "Then our investigation will only strengthen what you find."

Elbaz was silent. She glared through her screen at he and Vance, working her jaw. _"Fine. We will speak again this time tomorrow. We shall share the results of our investigations then."_

"24 hours isn't enough time for Agent Gibbs and his team to go over all the evidence you collected from the farmhouse," Vance said.

" _I will be sure to send Miss Sciuto the results of all the tests we ran."_

Gibbs shook his head. "We need more than that to conduct an investigation, Director."

" _Test results are all that is relevant. We shall speak tomorrow."_

The feed cut.

"We lose the connection?" Vance asked an MTAC technician.

"No, sir," the technician said, turning his head to look at Vance. "Director Elbaz ended the connection at her end.

Gibbs' eye twitched. Elbaz didn't want them investigating Ziva's death. Not because she feared being implicated, no—his gut said it was for a worse reason: she feared what they would find.

Elbaz was emotionally involved in this, and she wasn't managing it as well as she wanted others to believe. She had cared greatly about Ziva, and her death was affecting her more than she wanted to admit. The signs were there in how she said she'd buried Ziva, as if she'd dug the hole herself.

She didn't want to give herself the hope that Ziva might be alive.

"Director Elbaz isn't seeing this clearly," Vance said.

"Yeah," said Gibbs.

"Think picking apart their test results will be enough for Elbaz to send us everything they have?"

"No."

"Well, you need to find something that will."

"And no access to evidence that might do it."

"Then get creative. If Ziva David is really dead, I want to lay all doubts to rest as soon as possible."

"And if she's alive?"

Vance put a toothpick between his teeth. "Then I sure as hell want to get her back home. You're on a twenty-four hour clock, Gibbs. Get to work."

Gibbs made his way back to the Bullpen. "Listen up."

McGee and Bishop straightened immediately, looking at him. Waiting for his direction. His orders. His lead.

Like soldiers looking to their captain.

"Petty Officers Johnson and Bradley are now our secondary case."

Bishop and McGee looked confused, McGee more so than Bishop. "Then what case are we working on, Boss?"

"Ziva David's death. Find something that brings the truth of that statement into question."

His agents went still, blinking rapidly. They shared a shocked look. Like they couldn't believe what they just heard.

Gibbs whistled, and he had their attention again. "Hey, get to work."

His agents were typing before he closed his mouth. Their eyes were focused, hands flying over their keyboards at a speed that made his aged fingers ache. The rate he saw them navigating their screens gave him a headache.

 _Headache._

Gibbs turned and walked toward the elevator.

He needed coffee.

* * *

 **There you have it. Not long, but I wanted to get this done and posted so that all who are wondering if this one-shot was going to turn into a story. The answer is yes.**

 **This is mostly set up for the larger plot, so I apologize if it is disappointing to not see something with a little more to it. That will come in time.**

 **Thank you for reading, please let me know what you thought.**

 **See you soon.**


	3. Chapter 3

**You're probably wondering where the heck I went for months. The answer is simple: life.**

 **And unfortunately, no, it wasn't all good, either. There was a particularly bad event a couple months back that has been sticking with me. I am not going to go into details, but it sucked. Still does. Plain and simple. It derailed me for a while, but I'm back now... I think. It's honestly going to depend on you, the reader, if I'm really _back_. You see, that sucky event I mentioned? It's made me reconsider what's important in life, and as such I'm looking at all my writing with a critical eye - more so than normal.**

 **What that means is pretty simple: should I just scrap this story, or continue it? I ask because it has been a while since I updated, and the new NCIS season has since started. If you want me to continue this story, let me know. If you don't, well, I'll take your silence as answer enough.  
**

 **Since I had to go on a bit up above, I can't answer guest reviewers in-depth. I will just have to say thank you, and I hope you enjoy the update.  
**

 **Now, without further delay, chapter 3.**

 **Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.**

* * *

The Squadroom was uncomfortably silent at nearly four in the morning.

What usually would be a bustling room working to uncover truths to mysteries and justice for victims was now a virtual graveyard of empty desks and powered-down computers and TV monitors. The windows and skylight were not bright like they were in the day. Now, they were dark, with only faint moonlight coming into the building.

But the Bullpen was active as ever.

Gibbs was waiting on a call as Bishop and McGee worked at their computers, eyes focused on their screens like he was while working with wood. Empty cups and sandwich wrappings were scattered across their desks. All that was left of Gibbs' food and coffee runs.

The Bullpen's two main screens were on. One displayed bank accounts, credit card purchases, and phone records, while the second showed a series of NCIS case files, photographs, and approved undercover IDs. All made, once upon a time, for the focus of their search.

Ziva.

Ten of their 24 four hours were gone. His team hadn't uncovered anything to dispute Ziva David's death. No money had moved from the bank accounts that had yet to be closed. No purchases from the credit cards in Ziva's name that Tony was struggling to get canceled. No clues in her case files of where she might go if her life was threatened.

They needed more information. That was why he was expecting a call.

The simple, three-note ringtone of his phone went off, drowning out the sound of tapping keys from his team.

Gibbs picked up his phone, walked behind the staircase, and answered the call on its third ring. "Whadda got?"

" _Well, hello to you too, Gibbs,"_ said Fornell.

Since waking from his coma, Gibbs had seen—and heard—how hard Tobias was working to get back up to speed. Early mornings, even by his standards. Late nights, even by his standards. Work outs. Physical therapy. All while spending every moment he could with Emily. He was like a machine.

When he wasn't camping out on Gibbs' couch and eating his food.

"Hello."

" _Oh, come on. Put your heart into it."_

"You have anything?"

Gibbs heard Tobias shuffle some papers around his desk. _"Yes. One Tariq Alvi. Pakistani mercenary. Most active in Palestine, Israel and Syria. Hated by pretty much everyone, ISIS excluded."_

"You got his location?"

" _If I did, it would have been bogus intel through a CIA channel; he's Eighth on their Blacklist."_

"Then what did you call me for?"

" _Easy, Gibbs."_ Tobias' voice had a trace of its usual iron. _"I know you want to find the truth, no matter what it is. I'm letting you know where you can stop looking."_

Gibbs knew that, and appreciated it. But he didn't want to waste time. "Okay. Then what do you have?"

" _That's the thing, Gibbs—I have_ nothing _. No hits. No money being moved. No phone calls. No texts. No sightings. Not even at the brothels he likes to frequent in Turkey. The man's a ghost."_

Gibbs' gut said there was something wrong with that. Something very wrong. "He went dark."

" _Maybe, maybe not. I can't say for sure until I dig up some fresh intel. But, I didn't waste all my time. I have something that might be of use to you."_

"What?"

" _Ever since his first hit, Alvi's always posted on websites about his kills. How many there were. Who they were. Then follows it up with a prayer for strength to continue his work. With Ziva, there was nothing. Not even the initial anger he showed Kort."_

It definitely wasn't what he'd hoped for, but it was something. "Get back to work, Tobias."

" _Keep me in the loop, Gibbs."_

Gibbs hung up and returned to the Bullpen. "Where are we?"

The tapping keys stopped. Tim and Bishop exchanged a look from across the Bullpen. A wide eyed, pleading look. The universal look telling the other to speak up.

"I'm waiting."

Tim sighed and went first, "Checking through Ziva's financials hasn't led me anywhere. Every purchase is months old, made before she died. And no one has withdrawn or deposited money into her accounts since then."

"Anyone try to?"

"Not unless you count the bank itself labeling her account DORMANT in a couple years."

About as Gibbs expected. He looked to Bishop.

"Ziva's last phone call was from a local restaurant two days before she died," Bishop said. "After that, nothing. Not even a text. She wasn't what I'd call active when it comes to digital communication."

Wanted to be alone, Gibbs thought, and she made it happen. "That it?"

"The last activity on her account was this month. Her phone carrier suspending her account due to lack of payment on her plan."

Useless. They were missing something. He could feel it in his gut. Gibbs looked to the screen, to one of the fake ID photos. This wasn't their usual victim or suspect: this was _Ziva_. Former Israeli military, Mossad, and NCIS agent. She was sharp. Knew how to be invisible in plain sight and how to live in the shadows.

There was more to what was in front of them. They just weren't seeing it.

"We're doing this wrong."

"Boss?" Tim asked.

"We're looking at Ziva's records as if she was just another female victim. But she wasn't. She was Mossad, and from the moment she finished their training, she was far from normal." Gibbs turned to Tim. "What kind of things was Ziva buying?"

"I don't know; the foreign database I can get into doesn't have that."

"Well, then _find out_ what she bought. Fruit, beer, movies. Look at it like Ziva would—"

"And see if anything sticks out of the ordinary," Tim finished. "On it, Boss."

"Bishop." The blonde sat up a little straighter when Gibbs looked to her again. "Do you have any audio from Ziva's calls?"

"No, but I can call in some favors."

"Do that."

Gibbs left the Bullpen once Tim and Bishop got to work with the the outlook he gave them. He went to the elevator leading to the entrance, and hit the button for the ground floor.

The 7/11 around the corner was the only place to get Caf Pow at this hour.

* * *

Abby's Lab was silent when Gibbs walked in, Caf Pow in hand. Abby herself was standing at her computer, staring at the data that Mossad had sent her with wide, unblinking eyes. There were five empty Caf Pows in front of her.

Need to get her to cut back on sugar, Gibbs thought, briefly allowing his mind to switch to a more parental setting, before returning to business. "Got something, Abbs?"

Abby spun, pigtails continuing and snapping back in place when she stopped. She had both a scowl and a smirk on her face. He knew that look. "No."

"No?"

She gestured to the computer. "Mossad gave me _nothing_ , Gibbs. Well, they did, but they _didn't_. I don't have _anything_ to analyze, and all the tests they ran on the remains were superficial. They didn't try and really _dig_ for a proper ID. I mean, some of that comes from the mortar mangling the remains to the point where even dental records were useless, but a lot of it just comes from sloppy science."

Abby brought up a picture on her main screen of blackened and warped spine, skull, and arm bone fragments lying on an examination table, with an examiner standing over them. "Take this, for example. Instead of checking these pieces for DNA in the bone marrow, Mossad only ran tests on the residue from the mortar, yet they file them as one of twenty-one positive matches to Ziva's most recent medical records." She leaned forward, as if she were trying to get in the medical examiner's face. "That's not how forensics works!"

Gibbs waited for her to stand straight again to ask, "So they forged the positive ID?"

"Oh, no. They made sound conclusions with most other stuff, from what I can tell. They just weren't as thorough as they should have been. They might make good spies, but Mossad make lazy scientists."

"Then why did I come down here?" Gibbs shook the Caf Pow ever so slightly, knocking the ice cubes in the cup together.

Abby's eyes went to the Caf Pow. He saw the greedy look that appeared in her eyes before she tore her gaze away from the sugary drink and back to him. She smiled. "Because _I'm_ not lazy." She brought up a different image on the screen. It was of the same scientist as before turning over a part of a pelvis. Like the other bones, the pelvis fragment was also blackened and warped. "Tell me: what do your Gibbs eyes see, Gibbs?"

Gibbs looked at the bone for a moment. He saw nothing. "It's a pelvis."

"Very astute, Gibbs." Abby entered a command into her computer, and the image enhanced. Now, there was a section of the pelvis—a very small part, going by how large the scientist's finger now was—that was highlighted. Instead of being blackened, the highlighted section of bone was dark brown in color.

From how wide Abby's smile was, this was significant. Gibbs still didn't see it. "What am I looking at?"

"You are looking at the remains of a bone tumor that was removed _years_ ago. A very _particular_ type of bone tumor that comes from exposure to a very _particular_ type of chemical: Exasoil, or M-183. made by the now-defunct company Genetic Gardens from 86' to 89'. It was supposed to be Miracle Gro on steroids. Able to get _any_ crop to grow on _any_ soil, at _any_ time of year. At least, until it was proven that M-183 was, in fact, toxic waste that caused cancer and tumors. Like the one you see on screen."

"Was Ziva ever exposed?"

"One of the gardens in her school when she was six actually _did_ use Exasoil. A number of her little schoolmates and teachers contracted various forms of tumors and cancer from prolonged exposure." Abby frowned, looking like her mind was in another place. "About twenty of them died. It's heartbreaking, Gibbs. So many lives that could have lived up to so much, only to have them be cut short. It's not fair..."

"But was Ziva exposed?" He didn't like cutting to the point when it involved children, but Gibbs was on the clock, and it was about Ziva.

Now Abby smiled again, tragedy temporarily forgotten. "Her parents had her tested extensively after Exasoil was found to be dangerous, and she was as healthy as could be. No tumors."

The implications of what Abby just said stilled Gibbs' mind. The body wasn't Ziva's. She was out there, somewhere. Alive. But why was she off-grid? Why hadn't she made contact until yesterday?

What was so important that she'd left her daughter behind?

Gibbs blinked, and his unanswered questions went to the back of his mind. He looked back to Abby. "That's good work, Abbs." He gave her the Caf Pow and went for the door.

"Go find her, Gibbs!"

* * *

Gibbs returned to the Bullpen with a new sense of urgency in his fast, measured steps. "McGee."

"I got something, Boss." McGee stood up, TV control in hand, and clicked at the screen displaying Ziva's financial records. The image on screen changed to a long list of electronics, chemicals, food, and utility items. "The day before her death, Ziva went on a spending spree. Everything from baby food, movies, music, paint, even bumper stickers for her car. It's like she suddenly _had_ to go out and buy whatever she saw."

"Ziva wasn't an impulsive buyer," said Gibbs. He remembered that shortly after she came to the United States, she spent months reading and watching reviews of different cars before deciding on one.

"No she wasn't." McGee pressed a button on the remote. All but four things from the list of purchases went away. What remained was Advil, an American brand of whisky with a very high alcohol content, cloth, and a highly respected cleaning agent made to kill germs. No two items had been purchased in the same place. "So that makes me wonder why she needed all this."

Gibbs stared at the brand names for just a moment before seeing a connection. He pointed to the cloth. "Bandage." Then to the cleaning agent. "Sanitizer." Then to the whisky. "Local disinfectant." And finally to the Advil. "Painkiller. She was making a homemade first aid kit without making it obvious."

"Yeah, but why?" McGee asked. "I went back through her purchases a month before she bought all this, and she had just updated her first aid supplies. Why make a homemade kit when you have access to a better one?"

Gibbs thought of what Abby found, and it clicked. "Because she already used the first aid kit on someone."

"What?" Bishop asked.

Gibbs quickly filled Tim and Bishop in on Abby's discovery. McGee ended up back at his desk and in his chair, looking like someone had hit him. Bishop had a similar look.

"So, the body they found isn't Ziva's?" Bishop asked.

Gibbs shook his head. "No."

"And Abby's really sure?"

Gibbs gave her a look for that.

Bishop ducked her head. "Right. It's Abby. No mistakes made."

"Then whose is it?" McGee asked. Gibbs placed his tone between angry and stunned. "Why were they in Ziva's house? Why was Ziva helping them? Where is she _now?_ "

Gibbs saw a glint in Bishop's eye, and he looked at her fully.

She immediately started typing something into her computer. "I can't say I have any idea on the last one, but I think I might have something for the first two."

The screen behind Gibbs' desk changed, displaying the list of calls Ziva made and received up to a month prior to her death. Bishop highlighted the final call. "I called in those favors I was telling you about, and I got this from an NSA data site used as a tertiary backup. Listen." She hit her enter key.

Ziva's voice spoke first. Whatever she said was lost on Gibbs; Ziva was speaking Hebrew. But her voice… It sounded so happy. So at peace. Exactly like he wanted all his agents to be.

" _My Hebrew's a little rusty, Iva."_ The second voice was a woman's. High, but not pixie-like. Accent was American with a faint hint of Israeli. And pained. So pained. As if the mere act of speaking hurt like a stab wound.

"Who's that?" Gibbs' sensitive ears barely picked up the whispered question from McGee. Likely, it had been meant for himself.

" _Who is this?"_ There was suspicion in Ziva's voice. Suspicion that quickly faded to surprise. _"Wait, Diana?"_

" _Yeah, been a while."_

" _Years. You sound strained. Are you okay?"_

" _No, but I don't have time to explain. I need your help. Remember our favorite place to eat back in the day? I need to you drive there as soon as you can. I'm going to be in the back alley."_

" _Diana, wh—"_

" _Make sure no one follows you."_ The recording stopped.

Questions started. Who was Diana? How did she know Ziva? What had her worried?

Was she the body recovered from Ziva's farmhouse?

Gibbs forced his mind back to the present. "Who is she?"

"No idea," said Bishop. "But whoever she is, she knew how long it took for NSA voice recognition software to ID someone. She ended the call after just eighteen seconds."

"Then she was also paranoid," said McGee. "The NSA only uses that software when they're searching for one of the CIA's Blacklist."

"Just 'cause you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not out to get you." Gibbs turned away from the screen. "She was wounded. Didn't get that way by herself."

"Wounded and avoiding hospitals. She was running from someone." Bishop looked contemplative. "Someone who she thought had a lot of reach, so she calls up Ziva for help. Ziva helps her. Then two days later, the farmhouse is mortared. That's a seriously unlucky coincidence."

"I don't believe in coincidence."

The elevator dinged, sound louder than normal due to the early hour. Gibbs looked up in time to see Leon Vance walk into the Squadroom, looking as serious as ever.

"Surprised to see you this early, Director," McGee said.

"That would be because I'm normally asleep right now, Agent McGee." Vance stopped at the far end of the Bullpen, looking right at Gibbs. Gibbs could now see the unhappy look in Leon's eyes. "Gibbs—Director Elbaz wants a word. MTAC." Vance moved to the stairs with that.

Gibbs' eye twitched. Elbaz gave them 24 hours. Not even half that time had passed. What did she want? He went to follow Vance, but as he did, he looked at Bishop and McGee. "Diana. Find out who she was, and how she and Ziva knew each other."

Less than a minute later, Gibbs entered MTAC. Vance was standing in the middle of the room, much like he had just hours ago, hands behind his back, already looking in Gibbs' direction by the time he stepped inside.

"You have anything to give Elbaz?" Vance asked.

"I do."

Leon's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. Gibbs told him what his team had found, and Vance leaned back into his chair. "There really was someone else in Ziva's farmhouse."

"Yeah."

"You know for sure if it was this Diana?"

"Too early to tell."

"Sir," one of the MTAC technicians said, looking like he was hoping the technician scheduled to take his place would show up an hour early. "Director Elbaz is on the line."

"Patch her through," Vance said to the tech, then to Gibbs, "Let's hope Director Elbaz doesn't just see it as proof Ziva had a guest over when she died."

The main screen began to show a real-time feed of Elbaz at her desk. Unlike the last time they spoke, her office was bright. Afternoon in Tel Aviv.

" _Good morning, Director. Agent Gibbs,"_ Elbaz greeted. _"Thank you for being willing to talk so early in your day, but I thought it best to contact you now, so as to save you from wasting anymore time on an unnecessary investigation."_

Gibbs had been hoping to do the same for Elbaz.

"Director Elbaz," Vance greeted back. "What have you found?"

Elbaz lifted her right hand to reach for something off camera. Her hand came back with a piece of paper in it. _"I have a confession, from one Mossad Officer Noam Levi. He was one of the officers who Ziva occasionally called on for help with Tali. He has admitted to forging the note from Ziva, and sending it to Anthony Dinozzo, along with a stuffed lion for Tali."_

Gibbs' gut told him there was something wrong with what Elbaz uncovered. Not with her—with her information. With the source. He couldn't pinpoint what it was. "Did he give a reason for his actions?"

" _Officer Levi is a rarity among Mossad: a prankster. He wrote it as a joke. He has since expressed regret in his poor taste in humor."_

"What do you plan on doing with Officer Levi?" Vance asked.

" _A month's leave without pay, reassignment when he returns to duty. And a face-to-face apology to Anthony and his family, for the false hope he gave them."_ Elbaz paused and looked between Gibbs and Vance. Like she expected them to do or say something. She leaned back into her seat. _"Both of you were advocating for an investigation, yet now, when I present the results of mine, you say nothing. I have missed something."_

"You have: the results of _our_ investigation." Vance looked to Gibbs.

Gibbs took the hint. "The body in the farmhouse wasn't Ziva's."

Elbaz frowned. _"No, that is impossible. You se—"_

"Evidence doesn't lie, Director," Gibbs cut in. "Abby examined the photos you sent of the remains. She spotted what was left of a bone tumor."

" _Bone tumor? Miss Sciuto must be mistaken; Ziva did not have bone tumors."_

"The body you find in that farmhouse did at one point. Abby can give you exact details, if you want us to patch her through."

Elbaz still looked unconvinced.

"Miss Sciuto hasn't made a mistake since I took this job, Director," said Vance. "I stand by anything she reports, including the body you found in the farmhouse not belonging to Ziva David."

Elbaz was silent for a long time. Then she slumped forward, mask cracked wide open. Pain and confusion showing plainly. _"Ziva is alive."_

"Every indication on our end supports that."

" _But what is keeping her from coming forward?"_

"We're working a lead," Gibbs said. "We have audio from Ziva's last phone call. Whoever she was speaking to seemed afraid that someone was after them."

" _Someone dangerous?"_

"As I said, we're working a lead."

" _Too early to know, I understand. But what I_ don't _understand, is why Ziva has not made contact."_

Gibbs' gut sent him a feeling to act when Elbaz said that. To take _action_. That life and death depended on that action. "Honestly, Director—I think she has."

" _The note? That does not make sense. I have a... Confession..."_ Elbaz trailed off. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then horrified. _"I've made a terrible mistake."_

His gut told him something was very wrong. "Director?"

" _I should have seen it earlier."_ Elbaz reached across her desk again, hand coming back holding a phone. She spoke rapid Hebrew into it.

"Director Elbaz," Vance said. He looked as confused as Gibbs.

Elbaz hung up her phone, eyes still wide. Gibbs could see how quickly her body language had changed. How urgent she now appeared. His gut was right—something was _very_ wrong. _"When I sent Officer Levi home to start his unpaid leave, he asked me what room in the Ritz-Carlton I had booked for Anthony and his family. He said he wanted to get right on his apology."_

"What about that has you so panicked, Director?"

" _Because I never told Officer Levi where the Dinozzos were staying. I didn't tell_ anyone _where they were staying."_

It was then Gibbs understood why his gut was screaming at him. Diana was afraid for her life. She feared someone was after her—someone with reach.

Mossad had great reach.

"I want a security team at that hotel _now_ ," Vance said.

" _I have just called for two. But I don't know if they can get there within time."_

"Call Tony, Gibbs."

Gibbs had taken his phone out long before Vance addressed him. The only problem was his call wasn't going through.

There wasn't even a dial tone.

* * *

Tony found it hard to concentrate on the movie with his mind so occupied with thoughts of Ziva.

She was alive. He could feel it in his gut. He always had. But he was sidelined. Out of the game, unable to run out there and _find_ her. Oh, how he wanted to do just that. But who would take care of Tali? Senior? Please—he had subscribed to the grandpa role _way_ too quickly. If he left, Dad would fill her with cookies and ice cream. Couldn't have that with a girl as young as his daughter.

Wow. He sounded like a _parent_ with that thought.

With his mind—for once—not willing to focus on a movie, Tony subtly took out his phone and swiped in his pattern to unlock it.

No signal. Not even from Wi-Fi.

That was weird.

Tony stood up, throwing Tali a smile when she gave him a puzzled look. She smiled back and turned to the movie again, hugging her lion, Gibbs, close to her little chest.

"This is the best part, Junior," Senior said.

"Just a sec, Dad." Tony went to the phone to call the front desk. Maybe someone in the hotel had been messing with the Wi-Fi, and now it was interfering with his phone. That was possible, right? At least for McGee. Probably not for anyone else. Still worth a shot. He picked up the phone.

Nothing. Just a long, flat tone that signaled no connection.

Alarm bells went off in Tony's head.

Those alarm bells became honed instincts when he heard a string of gunfire outside. Senior jumped off the couch. Tali cried. Tony went to the window.

Eight floors below, down at street level, a group of nearly two dozen trucks, cars, and utility vehicles had stopped in the middle of the road, blocking traffic. Around them were armed gunmen with ski masks and AKs, firing into the air, and worse, into the surrounding crowd of people.

And some of the gunmen were entering their hotel.

They were under attack.

* * *

 **In case it isn't obvious: I'm a fan of cliffhangers. There's something so satisfying about writing them that feels... Right. And honestly, even reading them is fun to me. They make me want to read or watch or play more, and that's a good thing. So fair warning, if this story continues, you're going to get a lot of these.**

 **Now I leave you. Thank you for reading, and remember what I said above. If you want the story to continue, let me know.**

 **See you soon.**


	4. Chapter 4

**So, I managed to write an update pretty quickly, considering how inconsistent with writing I have been recently. I think my new way of approaching writing is working for me, though - hopefully I can carry over the success I had here with my other projects.**

 **As I had close to a dozen guest reviews last chapter, answering them all would make this author's note too long. So I will just say thank you very much for taking part in showing me this story still had an interested audience, and another thank you goes to everyone else with accounts who did the same!**

 **Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.**

* * *

Tony's gut said he needed be out of the hotel room _right now_.

He was moving less than three seconds after first seeing the gunmen enter the hotel.

He went to the couch and picked up Tali, holding her close and grabbing up her stuffed lion at the same time. He would need it to help him keep her quiet. Then he tapped Senior on the shoulder with the hand holding the lion. "Open the front door. Now."

"Junior, what's ha—"

"No time. Open the door."

Senior did, pocketing his room key at the same time. Tony's eyes went up and down the hallway, scanning for a place to hide that wasn't their room. His training told him this was no ordinary terrorist plot. There was no way a group as large as the one outside could operate as they were without serious help. Not in Israel. Not with how obsessive they were about security. And there was no reason why they would attack a _hotel_ of all things with so large a force. Why not a more political or strategic target?

Not the time to think, a voice in the back of Tony's head chided. It sounded a lot like Gibbs.

The room door right across the hallway opened. An older couple stepped out. The man was tall, a little overweight, had pale skin, no hair, and with more wrinkles around his grey eyes than Tony had years in his life. The woman had very tanned skin and greying black hair, with few wrinkles around her dark eyes. She was clearly in better shape than the man.

"What's going on out there?" The man asked, bent slightly from age. He had an English accent.

"Hotel's under attack."

The man didn't even blink. "That right? I suppose that puts a damper on our vacation, love."

The woman nodded, barely looking concerned. "It does," she said with an Israeli accent.

Tony's gut said their reaction said a lot about their past, but he didn't have time to analyze it. "We need to hide."

The man nodded. "Leave it to a Brit to save the Yanks. Get in."

Tony moved into the room, Senior right behind him. Once inside, the man closed the door and locked all three locks on it. "Love, the window."

The woman walked to the back of the main room of the suite and shut the blinds, darkening the room. Tony understood the strategy: silence repelled attention, and darkness meant silence to most. Generally speaking. He hoped—prayed—it was enough.

They waited in darkness for what seemed like an eternity. Muffled gunfire from outside was a constant, but occasionally, there were louder shots that came from _inside_ the building. The gunmen were attacking anyone in sight.

Tali started crying again. Long, loud wails that pierced his heart.

Tony didn't blame her; this was terrifying. But he couldn't let her keep doing this. He gave her to Senior. "Take her. To the to bathroom. Close the door, stuff towels underneath it. That should block the sound. Then get in the tub."

"What about you?" Senior asked.

"Someone has to make sure the front door stays closed."

There was horror in Senior's eyes. "Junior…"

"Go, Dad. I'll be fine."

"Family disagreements later," said the Brit. He had his ear to the door, listening. "I just heard someone bash the stair exit door. Won't be long"

Already? They were on the fifth floor. How could they have gotten up here so fast? He looked back to Senior. "Go."

Senior hesitated for a split second before listening to Tony. Tali's cries lessened in volume as Senior entered the bedroom, then the bathroom. They cut down further still as Senior closed the door, and cut out entirely a moment later. Towels under the door.

"Bedroom, Sarah," the Brit said to the woman.

"I'm in better shape than you," said Sarah. "I should hold the door."

"Ah, but I got the mass." The man tapped his belly.

The woman frowned, then nodded and went to the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Military experience, Tony realized. This couple had been soldiers at one point. Probably for a long time.

But that didn't matter; he had to make _sure_ this front door stayed shut. Problem was, he had no weapon. Which left him only one option.

He sat down in front of the door. He weighed a little over two hundred and ten. Not his peak, but still probably a little over where he needed to be. Moving two hundred pounds wasn't hard for a soldier, but it wasn't easy, either. His weight would have to do.

More gunfire from outside. More gunfire from inside. He heard screams this time. Too many screams.

The Brit sat down next to him, taking up more than half the door's width. "What's your name, Yank?"

"Tony."

"Italian, eh? I'm Marshall. Wish we met under better circumstances."

"Same here, Marshall."

They said nothing after that. No need to. They were doing what they had to. They were doing it for their families. And they were doing it together. As the UK and the US so often did. That was enough.

A few moments passed. Then, over the screaming and the gunfire, Tony heard it.

Heavy boots on expensive flooring. Many of them. Moving closer. Closer. Closer. Ever closer. Almost in tune with the gunfire and the screaming. Like they were near-soundless wraiths come to claim the lives of all who dared look upon them.

The boots got louder and louder, then stopped right in front of the door. He pictured the group of gunmen right outside the door, their supernatural sight seeing straight through the wood and right into the back of his head. In their hands were rifles, shotguns, and a battering ram, ready to break down the door in a shower of splintered wood and bullets.

Tony's heart thudded in his chest. He didn't dare move a muscle. Didn't dare blink. Didn't dare breathe. Any sound—of _any_ kind—could endanger his daughter. He couldn't allow that. He _would not_ let her be _harmed_. If that meant being shot in the back, so be it.

The crash nearly stopped his heart. The sound of breaking wood and heavy boots moving again came so suddenly, so completely without warning, that it took Tony a moment to realize he was still sitting against the door. Unharmed.

The gunmen had entered Tony's room—across the hall.

And his gut told him he needed to see why.

As quietly as a ghost, Tony moved his weight off the door. Marshall immediately glared at him, eyes _screaming,_ "What the hell are you doing?"

Tony brought a finger to his lips, and slowly rose up onto his feet. Then he rose up to the door viewer, mentally counting the seconds.

Two gunmen were across the hall, positioned at either side of Tony's hotel room door. Ski masks hid their faces, and they wore dark civilian clothing. The AKs in their hands had foregrips attached, along with quick-swap magazines—one magazine loaded in the weapon, with the other attached to the side. They looked like the stereotypical terrorists.

But the way they guarded the door was _Western_ in its style. One knee on the ground, AK sights up in front of their dominant eye. Scanning either side of the hallway slowly. Sweeping their weapon back and forth. Back and forth. It didn't fit with typical terrorists. Especially terrorist groups the size of this one. They went for numbers, not quality. Definitely not both.

Their actions didn't fit with their projected image.

Tony's attention went to the room. Other gunmen were inside. At first, they were clearing it for threats—again with a style and professionalism that was more typical of high-quality militaries than extremist groups—then they were destroying everything within the room. Cushions. Pillows. Furniture. Tali's toys. Even the paintings and the TV. All were quickly torn or taken apart by the gunmen.

Tony's gut had been saying he was the target of this assault since he saw the gunmen. Now he had proof. The gunmen were searching for something—something they wanted badly enough to mount a full-scale assault on a civilian target just to get to him. But what did they want, and why did they think he had it?

One of the gunmen stopped in the middle of the room and put two fingers against his ear. He stood like that for a few seconds, then lowered his hand and said something in Arabic, or a dialect of Arabic, that Tony didn't catch with all the gunfire outside and inside the hotel. Immediately, all the gunmen in the room moved out into the hallway, falling into set positions. Last to leave was the one who gave the order. When he formed up with the rest, the gunmen moved in the direction of the stairs, quickly disappearing from view.

In and out in less than sixty seconds, Tony thought, stopping his mental clock. Way too fast for terrorists. Another action that didn't fit.

He didn't move until the sound of the gunmen's boots faded. When he did, he realized the gunfire had stopped. Totally and completely. Like every single gunmen had run out of ammo at the exact same time.

"What were you _thinking_?" Marshall growled, voice barely a whisper. "You could have gotten their attention!"

Tony ignored the Brit and quietly went to the window. He moved to the side of the blinds and slowly, ever so slowly, pushed them back just enough for Tony to give one of his eyes a view of the street below.

The gunmen were leaving. Quickly. Some vehicles had already leaving by the time Tony looked out the window. The rest lasted only another couple minutes before the gunmen climbed in and sped off, leaving the streets deathly still and silent.

Professional in executing a mission and extracting themselves from it. Just who the hell were they? What had they been looking for? Why did they leave so quickly?

The answer to that last one came a few minutes later. An armored convoy was rolling up the road, headed by a pair of Namer APCS—perhaps the most survivable armored vehicle in the world. One was mounted with a M2 Browning Machine Guns on its remote weapons station, while the other had an MK19 Grenade Launcher.

"Have they left?" Marshall asked.

"Yeah," Tony said. "Yeah, they're gone. Calvary's incoming."

"'Bout time. Was beginning to think the Israelis were getting slow."

Tony checked his phone. Perfect signal. Gunmen must have had a jammer. He had three missed calls from Gibbs.

Have to wait another minute, Boss, he thought. He walked to the bedroom door and knocked softly. Sarah answered. "My family?"

"Bathroom's there," she said, pointing at a closed door at the other side of the room and to the left.

"Thanks." He went to the bathroom door. Now that he was closer, he could hear Tali's faint crying on the other side, through the wood. The father in him immediately felt terrible in not drying her tears; the agent in him was relieved she was safe. He knocked on the door. "Dad, they're gone. Open up."

It took all of two seconds for Senior to swing the door open and start crushing him in a one-armed hug, Tali wiggling in his other arm. Her cries were nearly deafening. "I'm so glad you're safe, Junior."

Tony returned the hug. "Me, too, Dad. Give her here."

Senior did, and immediately his daughter went to break his neck with her little arms, stuffed lion Gibbs held in one hand. And oh, her _sobs_. They broke his heart. He had to be the worst father ever. "It's okay. It's okay. Abba's here…"

Just another minute, Boss, he thought as Tali kept bawling. Tali comes first.

* * *

"I'll call back with transportation details in thirty," Gibbs finished. He ended the call and stood up from his desk, giving the eager McGee and Bishop his attention. "They're okay."

"Good," said McGee, looking visibly relieved. "Where are they now?"

"The security teams from Mossad escorted them to our embassy. They're sitting in the Ambassador's personal safe room right now. Marines are guarding the door."

"We getting them out of the country?" Bishop asked.

"Director's working on something." Gibbs looked to the screen betwen McGee's desk and the one that used to be Tony's. They had the news on, and it was talking about the attack on the hotel. Current count had ninety-six dead and nearly two hundred wounded men, women, and children. The numbers were expected to go up.

Not a single gunmen—no, a single monster, for only a monster could open fire on children—had been seen since the attack, now nearly two hours ago. Not one. Too professional for terrorists. Too professional for most soldiers. His gut said that made them elite mercenaries, or worse, corrupt members of an elite military unit.

His eye twitched at the thought. "Where are we with former Mossad Officer Levi?"

"Hasn't been or heard from since he left after meeting with Director Elbaz," McGee said. "Mossad and Israeli Police are still searching for any trace of him."

"Bishop."

"Levi turned his phone off less than ten minutes after he met with Elbaz," Bishop said. "But, I was able to call in another favor, and I got this." She tapped the keys on her computer, and the screen behind Gibbs displayed a series of phone contacts, all listed in Hebrew. Bishop entered another command, and the text converted to English. She highlighted one listed as an unknown number, and a single text came up.

 _Target's in room 514. No time to take it quietly. You are cleared for a full assault._

Levi ordered the attack. Gibbs fought back the instinctive fury he felt whenever he saw a soldier bring shame to their uniform—or in this case, their agency.

"He turned his phone off right after sending this message," Bishop went on. "After that, he drops off the grid."

"Anyone in the NSA making him a priority?" Gibbs asked.

"My contacts say his name's floating around the building. I called in another favor to have let me know if they find anything."

Gibbs looked to McGee.

"We don't have access yet, but Levi's bank accounts and credit cards have been frozen by Mossad," Tim said. "YAMAM also raided his house. Clean, other than his Mossad ID lying on the kitchen table. They also found a two-foot wide, square hole in the floor. It was empty, but something had been there before."

Go-bag, Gibbs thought. Every officer, agent, and spy had one. Gibbs had one, both at home and during his assignments overseas. Levi's probably contained cash, passports, and probably a firearm. Everything he would need to disappear.

It made him angry. The attack. Levi. Having nothing to work with. All of it. He hated seeing innocents fall victim to evil he couldn't prevent. He hated traitors. He hated being unable to pursue a suspect. He hated feeling behind.

His eye twitched, gut telling him he was missing something. He needed coffee.

"Why did he do this?"

His team didn't answer.

He turned around to look at them. "Why did he order an attack? Why target DiNozzo? How does it relate to Ziva?"

"Maybe he's a terrorist mole?" Bishop offered. "ISIS has made a lot of money in illegal oil and kidnapping. Maybe they thought going after a former federal agent and his family would bring in a big ransom."

"Doesn't fit Ziva into the equation. What else?"

"Same as Bishop," said McGee. "But replacing ISIS with the remnants of Saleem Ulman's group. We never managed to take out all of his followers, and Saleem trained his men to never forgive or forget an insult. They know Tony was there when Saleem died."

"Saleem's organization fell apart without his leadership. The few that still believed in his cause went to Al-Qaeda. What else?"

Bishop and McGee were silent.

Gibbs' eye twitched. "Come on! You're NCIS Agents. Think." Gibbs pointed to the text on the screen behind him. "How does Noam Levi fit into what we know? How does he have his own private strike force without _anyone_ knowing about it?!"

They had no answers.

And neither did Gibbs' gut.

* * *

Noam Levi was sweating. It was hard not to in the Israeli heat, but this time, he was not sweating from the temperature.

He was sweating because he was afraid.

The operation ended in failure. The target was not found. The objective went unsecured. He had failed. He not only failed, but used resources he should not have used while doing so. That would have consequences, if he was not careful.

Noam reached down to his belt and grabbed the bottled water there. The cool liquid soothed his throat, but did little for his nerves. Subtly, he checked his surroundings for suspicious vehicles or persons for the third time in ten minutes. Nothing unusual. No one was following him. That would earn him a little grace.

He continued down the street, keeping his head high and walk brisk but unworried. He was in the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Neve Sha'anan—a neighborhood now known mostly for its high population of foreign workers and asylum seekers. Here, Noam was far more likely to be seen as a foreigner than an Israeli.

That was why he had set up his safe house in the area.

Noam reached the near-abandoned building where he had an set up his safe house. He looked up and down the street, saw no one, and took out the key to get into the lobby. Or, what had been a lobby at one point. It had no staff, no furniture, and more than eight out of every ten apartment doors he saw led to vacant homes. Still, the owner was alive, and stopped by once a month to collect from the few renters. He wouldn't be getting a visit; he bought his apartment.

He walked up the stairs, each step creaking as if his foot would snap it in two at any moment. He went up six floors, went down a hallway, and another after it, then came to his apartment—well out of the way and forgotten. The way a safe house should have been.

Noam took out another key and inserted it into the lock. It struggled against him for a moment, disuse and age causing it to be hard to turn, but it gave under his persistence. He opened the door and stepped inside.

Then he froze.

A group of men were in his safe house. Well-built, bearded men who were of several races and varied in age from several years Levi's junior to more than a decade his senior. All wore clothing that was far too expensive for this town, and all were looking at him with hard, intense eyes that spoke of danger and long histories of violence.

But the man who grabbed Noam's attention was the only one not looking at him.

Sitting in at the small table near the apartment's living room window, staring out at the city skyline in the distance, was a light-skinned man in a pitch black suit worth more than anything Levi had ever owned. The man's short, snow white hair spoke of advanced age, but his powerful build and six-eight frame spoke of physical strength few could best. A very unique, very old, golden Rolex was visible on his right wrist.

It was _him_ , Noam thought. Death itself. How had he even gotten to Israel so quickly?

"Were you planning on running from your problem, Operative Levi?" It was the suited man who spoke, and he spoke Hebrew like it was his first language.

"Yes," Levi said. It was better to be honest than to lie to _him_. At least when the truth would not get him killed outright. Noam knew that. He would find out if you lied. Then things would get infinitely more messy.

"Why were you running?"

"Because I failed you today."

"Today? You haven't failed today. You've done so much _more than that_." Even without changing the tone of his deep, clear voice, the man in the suit managed to convey his _rage_ through the words. It made the hair on the back of Noam's neck stand on end "For _six years_ , I give you $9,000 every week for any information you decide to give me, important or otherwise. Then, just once, I give you a task outside information: find and eliminate Ziva David. You are a trained Mossad Agent, at the peak of your physical abilities. Yet you failed at my task months ago, and you've kept failing at it every single day since. Then, at long last, you find an _inkling_ of hope to redeem yourself, but instead of seizing the opportunity, you _hijack_ a _very carefully_ organized Task Force to fix your mistakes, and _compromise it_. Now, you've created a headache for me. No, you haven't failed, Operative Levi—you've exhausted my patience."

Levi felt cold fear stab his heart, but he pushed through it. "Sir, if I may defend myself."

"You have one minute."

Noam took a breath, then laid out the last-ditch, desperate lie he'd crafted, "Sir, it was Operative James. It was his idea to use the Task Force on the hotel. He'd been _eager_ to see the chaos it could cause. I told him that wasn't why you put it together, but he… He convinced me sacrificing the Task Force was worth it for securing the Package. I regret not contacting you about his ambitions."

"I see. And will Operative James lie to me about his abuse of power?"

"I believe so, sir."

The man in the suit snapped a finger, and one of the other men stepped forward with a phone in his hand. He gave it to the man in the suit, then stepped away. "Then why, Operative Levi, did he send me a message last night about your laziness?"

Levi froze.

"My favorite part is where he says he planned on detaining you in the morning. Strange, he never did. I wonder, though—what will I find, should I dig up that fresh patch of ground two miles east of the city?"

Noam knew then it was over. He knew Noam had killed James that morning when he arrived to detain him. He knew everything was Noam's doing. All his failure.

Levi should have known better to try and lie.

"That is what I thought." The man stood, buttoning his suit jacket. "Goodbye, Operative Levi."

Levi felt the cold steel of a silenced handgun tap the side of his head.

Then there was nothing.

* * *

 **There you have it. Another chapter down. A supposed player in the game now dead. A new one taking their place. I can't say I'm completely happy with how this one turned out, especially the ending scene, but I hope you all still enjoyed. If not, please point where I could have done better.**

 **So thank you all for reading, and please remember to comment on anything that catches your attention; reviews are quite useful in creating inspiration.**

 **See you soon.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Apologies for taking so long in writing this. I never seem to be able to write consistently anymore. I will be doing what I can to improve update speed for the next update, if people still wish me to continue; I know it must be frustrating have multiple month breaks between updates.**

 **Anyway, I want to go head and thank everyone who reviewed or favorited or followed after my last update. It is surprising to see this become popular so quickly, and I love reading the feedback you have given me so far. I hope you all enjoy this update!**

 **Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.**

* * *

Tony walked his route through the ambassador's safe room for the third time in the last hour.

With a full bathroom, two small bedrooms, living room, fully stocked kitchen, and office with hardened communications equipment, the safe room wasn't so much a safe room as it was a series of safe _rooms_ —plural. All protected by biometric security, tungsten-filled walls, a six-inch-thick armored door, and independent water, air, and power systems.

He found it a bit much.

It was built to house the ambassador, his family, and his guards for up to a week without needing anything from the outside, so the size and security made sense. But did the ambassador really need a movie collection in the office? A king-sized mattress in the larger of the two bedrooms? A La-Z-Boy in the living room, sat in front of a 65-inch Samsung 4K? Tony thought not. The ambassador had turned the safe room into a man cave away from the man cave.

But, it was safe, he couldn't argue with that. And safe was all he wanted his family to be. Now if he could just get himself to calm down a moment…

A hiss from the safe room door signaled the air seal breaking. For the second time in the last two days, he instinctively reached for his weapon, and for the second time came up empty. Old habits, he chided himself.

The door swung inward. Tony caught a glimpse of the Marine who opened it before Ambassador Daniel Craig walked in with a folder in hand. No relation to the current Bond, but he had a bit of the actor's looks, with short blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, and a fit physique. But like the other Daniel Craig, Tony bet he probably couldn't match Sean Connery's Bond.

"It's quite a sight out there," said Craig, his Bostonian accent so faint it was nearly undetectable. "Civilian traffic nowhere to be seen. Military vehicles rolling through the streets. Armed soldiers patrolling the sidewalks. Looks like a warzone."

"Did the Israelis declare Martial Law?" Tony asked.

"Not yet, but there's a chance. This might be one of the few things that warrant its justification. How's your family?"

Tony looked toward one of the bedrooms. Senior was there with Tali, catching afternoon naps. Probably for the best; the body needed rest after a rush of adrenaline, especially in the young and old. Tony would wake them up in another hour, when the Navy C-130T Hercules Vance arranged to take them to Italy touched down at Ben Gurion International Airport. "They're fine. Recuperating."

"Good. What about you?"

"What about me?"

"How are you holding up?"

"Fine."

Craig raised an eyebrow, then sighed after a moment. "Mr. Dinozzo, I admit I am not familiar with what you did at, what was it—NCIS? But whatever it was, I do not believe it allows you to be immune to the physiological effects of trauma."

"It's done enough that I'm fine."

"Then might I ask why you're pacing?"

Tony hadn't realized he was moving until the Ambassador asked the question. He stopped himself, standing up a little straighter. "Just stretching my legs."

"You were doing that the last time I was in here. Do you cramp that easily?"

"Age catches up to everyone, I guess."

Dinozzo found it a little unnerving how Gibbs-like Craig's stare became. The way it was blank yet hard as stone. How it seemed to look _into_ a person instead of _at_ them. Tony let out a breath he didn't know he was holding when the Ambassador looked away to lay his folder on the table. "If that's true, have a look at these."

Tony gave the folder a proper look for the first time. It was thick—maybe half an inch. He'd held enough folders just like it to know the type of paper just barely visible at the folder's top right corner belonged to photographs. "What's this?"

"First round of photos taken by Israeli CSIs. Guess where they're from."

Tony felt his pulse quicken. His breath hitch. An instinctive urge to move to Tali and watch over her. The part of his mind still running like an NCIS Special Agent's didn't like his reaction.

"Still fine?"

"Yeah," Tony said, perhaps a little too quickly. "Just surprised by Israeli efficiency."

"Don't be. Talk politics all you want, but few can deny the Israelis work quickly."

"Yeah."

A short silence fell. Tony realized then the Ambassador hadn't believed him at all when Tony said he was fine. He cleared his throat and picked up the Ambassador's folder. Then he opened it.

The body of the staff member who'd given him the package with Tali's lion was in the top photo. Bullet-ridden, with a chunk of his gut missing, a great pool of blood beneath him, his eyes wide open and forever staring up at the ceiling in fear. So much fear.

Years of experience seeing dead bodies in person kept Tony from reacting to the familiar face. He flipped to the next photo. A couple of tourists. Same state as the first guy.

He spent the next few minutes looking at photo after photo. Some were of bodies he'd seen already, others weren't. Many had been taken at different locations in the hotel. The pool. The beach. The dining room. Personal rooms. There were so many dead—a good amount of them in a state much worse than the staff guy, too. But Tony still didn't react to any of them. He could feel the Ambassador watching him, gauging his response. Tony wasn't going to let Craig see how on edge he really was.

At last, he came to the last photos in the folder. His room. The remains of Tali's toys were everywhere, torn apart by the gunmen who entered. Most of the room was in a similar state, with anything moveable thrown or broken or flipped. There were even a few portions of the wall that had been torn open. They had worked fast.

"How many dead?" Tony finally asked.

"One thirty-nine is the final count. Twice that in wounded. It would have been higher, if the insurgents moved beyond the first two floors."

Tony frowned. First two? "My room was on the fifth floor."

Craig nodded. "Yes it was, and yours was the only one hit beyond room 221. Do you have any idea why?"

"No." It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the full truth, either. He had no idea what brought those gunmen up to his room, but his gut said it had something to do with Ziva. Something she'd done, or had said. That part he didn't know.

Craig sighed. "I thought that was the case. Either way, I need to return to my public office; POTUS wants an update." He stepped over to the door and placed his hand against a smooth panel to the side. The air seal broke again once he had, its lock disengaging just after.

"You need these back?" Tony asked as the door was swung open by one of the Marines outside, holding up the folder.

"Keep them, Mr. Dinozzo." Craig stepped out the door, and, just before the Marine closed it again, added, "Maybe you'll see something meaningful." Then he was gone.

Not likely, Tony thought. But it would give him something to do until their ride got there.

He opened the folder again and started going through the photos again, hoping—against all odds—that he might find an answer in them.

Why had the gunmen targeted him?

* * *

The Squadroom had reached its normal level of activity by 7:30AM, local time.

NCIS Special Agents moved from desk to desk, exchanging relevant case information, ideas, and files. Probies occasionally left the room to get the full Agents their breakfast or choice of coffee. Case Agents advised the men and women under them, listening to theorized narratives before giving or denying the go-ahead to bring in a suspect.

But a few Agents currently had bigger concerns.

Gibbs' sharp hearing caught bits and pieces of Hebrew and Arabic in the cacophony of Squadroom noise. The broken words would be coming from Agents who had contacts in the Middle-East, specifically in Israel or the states surrounding it. There were a number of agencies, both American and otherwise, who were involved in investigating the Ritz-Carlton attack.

Gibbs made his way through the Squadroom and entered the Bullpen. Both Tim and Bishop were asleep at their desks, hands still resting on the computer keyboards in front of them. Gibbs wasn't surprised; not one of his Agents had ever been able to go without sleep as long as he was.

"Get up," he said, stopping briefly at Bishop's desk to drop off a cup of coffee before moving to McGee's desk to do the same. "Got work to do."

Bishop and McGee said nothing at first. They got up, groggily, and picked up the coffee cups in front of them. Then, simultaneously, they took one long gulp and set their cups down, the required infusion of caffeine complete.

"What time is it?" Bishop asked.

"Almost nine," Tim said, blinking sleep from his eyes. "That means Tony's ride lands in…" He looked at his watch again, then added, "A little over half an hour."

"Time for an update," Gibbs said. "Where are we?"

"On which case, Boss?"

"Either."

McGee powered up the screen behind Gibbs' desk. "While you were gone, we went over Noam Levi's bank accounts. As expected from a Mossad operative, Levi isn't hurting for cash. According to the records Mossad sent out through intelligence cables, Levi has four bank accounts in his name—all of which each hold more than four hundred thousand NIS, or about $104,000 dollars US."

"About right for a single intelligence officer at work for more than a decade," Bishop said. "I remember what it was like to have money in the bank."

McGee frowned. "You always told me you still had a lot left from your NSA days. What happened?"

"Divorce lawyers."

Tim closed his mouth, then cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Anyway. With money like this in the bank, Boss, Levi probably had a lot of cash on hand."

"Makes him hard to track," Gibbs said, eying the screen thoughtfully. His gut said there was something there, right in the bank accounts, that he wasn't seeing. He chose to come back to the feeling. "What else?"

"That's about it on Levi, Boss. He's in the wind. No email. No phone. No car. Nothing else we can do from this Hemisphere."

"What about the woman who called Ziva? Whadda have on her?"

"Between McGee, Abby, and I, we're confident Diana was a schoolmate of Ziva's when they were children," Bishop said. "It explains the bone tumor Abby saw on the remains from the farmhouse. But unfortunately, we don't have access to the school's records yet."

"Why?"

"The school closed when it had the M-183 scandal," Tim said. "Its records never went digital. We're waiting on an Israeli archive to get back to us."

Hurry up and wait. Gibbs had enough of that in the Marines. "And our second case?"

"We're… Honestly, we're stumped, Boss. We have no witnesses. No leads. No suspects. No motives. Based on what we know, it looks like a random killing."

Nothing was random. Gibbs looked back to Levi's back accounts, trying to see what his gut felt was there. There were numerous transactions on each account, some large, others small. Monthly bills being paid, spontaneous purchases. Transfers to and from the accounts. All normal transactions even Gibbs made on a regular basis.

Why was his gut telling him to look closer?

Gibbs focused on the large transactions in each account. When he didn't see anything, he focused on the small ones, then he went to the dates of the withdrawal or deposit. Then he saw it.

Every third paycheck, along with money from Mossad, Levi deposited a check into one of his accounts. The amount of the check was small, never more than three thousand NIS—New Israeli Shekels—and never less than one thousand NIS. But the fact it was small made it significant. What did Levi do for so little pay, and why did he get a check only once for every three he got from Mossad?

It didn't add up.

"McGee. Bishop. What do these look like to you?" Gibbs pointed to the unusual deposits.

His agents were silent, staring where he pointed. Then Bishop offered, "Winnings from poker night?"

"Mossad regulations forbid gambling," McGee said. "They view it as a weakness that can be exploited. Ziva once told me she knew a field officer who gambled anyway. Mossad kicked him out."

"So not poker night. The amounts are way too small to be bribes. Maybe a part-time job he did for fun?"

"Mossad doesn't typically allow anyone to have jobs outside Mossad. He'd have to be paid in cash." Realization seemed to strike McGee in that moment. "Which would mean he'd be on camera to deposit anything. And if he was on camera, we could pinpoint his location for each deposit."

"And if we do that and cross-reference branch locations with places Levi frequented or lived…"

"We might be able to figure out where he would go to hide."

His agents looked to him. "Don't look at me. Do it."

Bishop and McGee started to work, any lingering fatigue gone, their fingers flying over their keyboards. Gibbs would never understand why computers could wake them up better than coffee could.

Which he needed another cup of.

He stepped out from behind his desk, but stopped when he saw McGee suddenly frown and stop working on his computer. Bishop did the same a moment later.

"Well?" The question was for either agent.

"They aren't cash deposits," Bishop said.

"Then what are they?"

"Transfers," McGee said.

"And?"

"And I can't trace where they came from."

Gibbs' mind immediately went back to Petty Officers Johnson and Bradley. They also had money in their bank accounts that McGee wasn't able to trace.

He looked to Bishop. She shook her head. "I'm in the same boat, Gibbs. I don't know where that money came from, and I don't know how to trace it."

That was the deciding factor for Gibbs. No such thing as coincidence. And it was no coincidence that not one, but _two_ cases they were running had a financial element to them neither of his agents could crack. There was only one reason that could be.

They were connected. Somehow, someway, they were connected.

But by what?

* * *

The man with the light skin, snow-white hair black suit stood in front of a table that had twelve separate cell phones lying on it.

The phones were average models. Not the newest, most desired line, but also not a basic model that had the ability to only talk and text.. Each had a touchscreen. Each used mobile data. Each lacked the GPS tracker present in all modern phones. Each had a custom app that distorted the voice of the one who spoke into it. They served any need the man might require.

He stood in an isolated bedroom of a house he owned. It, like the phones, was not the newest model, but it, like the phones, was also not basic. It had four bedrooms. Three bathrooms. Air conditioning. A full kitchen. Triple-pane glass windows. Blinds. An advanced, mobile security system that could be installed into any structure within twenty minutes. A group of his personal guard. Ex-SEALS. Zaslons. MARCOS. SAS personnel. Many others, depending on the rotation. The house, like the phones, served any need the man might require.

One of the phones rang. The man answered. _"A small firm has requested a sale, sir."_ The man on the other end of the line spoke French.

" _What do they request?"_ The man in the black suit spoke French with a cédille accent. A deliberate effort on his part.

" _Approximately ten thousand carats in diamonds and three thousand carats of emeralds. I have informed them of our current prices of $1,100 per carat of diamonds, and $4,000 per carat of emerald. They are willing to pay full price."_

" _Proceed with the sale, Operative Koffi. Then monitor the market; prices may increase as a result."_

" _As you wish, Décès."_

The man in the black suit hung up the phone. He placed it on the table, then smashed it with a nearby hammer. Glass spread across the table.

Another phone rang. The man answered. _"Demand has exceeded supply, Sterben."_ The new man on the end of the line spoke German.

" _How badly, Operative Weber?"_ The man in the black suit adopted a Alsatian accent with the German language. Another deliberate effort.

" _I have had to offer T-72Ms as substitutes for a lack of adequate T-80 stock."_

" _Include an early invitation to the next auction to any party that finds available products unsatisfactory. Increase the price on any orders for T-80s to €6,500,000 per unit."_

" _As you command, Sterben."_

The man in the black suit repeated the process he had with the first phone, then continued standing there in front of the table. Waiting—waiting for _the_ call. The one he needed right now.

It arrived seven minutes later.

The man picked up the phone. _"Plane just took off again."_ The voice on the other end of the line spoke English. Accent was American. The man in the black suit's native speech.

"Is it done?" He asked.

" _Yes. But, sir, I need to be clear: this was never guaranteed to work. The part_ should _wear out in time, but it might hold longer than expected."_

"I am aware of the possibilities, Operative Smith. Either way, success or fault will fall on your shoulders."

" _Understood, Death."_

* * *

Tony swore his daughter had somehow picked up Gibbs' habits in the short time she was in DC.

He watched, awed, as his daughter slept soundly against his side. Completely and totally _out_ even as the sound of the C-130's propellers nearly burst his eardrums and threw he and Senior around at the slightest turbulence. How did she do it? Magic? Genetics? Exhaustion? Fear of what was on the ground greater than what was in the air?

Tony wrapped his arm around Tali a little tighter. Maybe he'd been a little too real with that last thought. He hated how much trauma his daughter had lived through in the last months. First her home burning down and her mother disappearing, now living through a terror attack in Israel. He needed to keep a close eye on her in the coming days.

A particularly bad shake from turbulence caused Tali to drop Gibbs down on the floor. Tony watched helplessly as the rough ride carried the stuffed lion away and out of reach.

One of the crew—Dan, Tony thought his name was—an athletically-built man of average height who had a smile he couldn't seem to wipe off his face, crouched and grabbed the toy as it approached him. He walked over to Tony, heedless of the shaking, and handed Tony the lion.

Tony offered a smile and nod of thanks, and Dan returned it before moving back to his station. He went to sneak Gibbs back beneath Tali's arm, but he paused.

Was that _metal_ he just felt?

Tony squeezed the toy a little harder. Sure enough, he felt something metallic inside. Small. Rectangular. Not normal for a child's toy.

There was something inside.

Tony looked closely at Gibbs' seams. Most of them looked either worn or lightly burned. Study, though. However, one was new. New and flimsy. At its left side, just inside its chest. He hadn't noticed it before.

Very carefully, he lifted his arm from Tali. Then, equally as carefully, he pulled at the new seam. It came undone with a little strength behind it, and an inch long cut opened. He reached inside, found the object he felt before, and pulled it out.

It was a flash drive. A sleek, black flash drive that had 2TB on the side. McGee probably would have known what that meant.

What the _hell_ was this doing inside Tali's favorite stuffed animal?

Was _this_ why he'd been targeted?

The plane shook like it had been hit with something big. A great _clang_ sounded out over the roar of the propellers. The ride became ten-fold rougher. Dan's smile finally vanished.

Oh, no...

* * *

 **I believe the user ctc posed a question that was related to that twist at the end. Great thought on their part suspecting Gibbs the lion was more than just a favorite toy being returned.**

 **I feel I am being a bit annoying with how short these updates are. But, this is how the chapter fell into place. I am hoping next update will be both longer, and come quicker than this one. That way I won't leave you readers with a multi-month cliffhanger to wait on.**

 **Thank you all for reading, and if you enjoyed, please tell your friends! Despite my writing style, I really do try to be friendly.**

 **One last thing. On my other main story, I list a suggested credit song (or three, depending on the complexity of the update) down here in the second author's note. So, credit songs in future updates: yes/no?**

 **See you soon.**


	6. Chapter 6

**And so I return to give an update. Again, apologies. Slow writer, and all.**

 **Again, thanks go to everyone who favorited, reviewed, or followed since last update. I sincerely appreciate all the feedback I get, and I hope you all stick around; things are starting to get interesting.**

 **Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.**

* * *

Even as Tony heard the _clang_ and felt the plane shake like a giant hand had grabbed it, he knew there was nothing he could do.

All the running, shouting, demands, and all knowledge of planes in the world wouldn't do a thing to help. He was not the pilot. He could not control the aircraft. He could not determine what had gone wrong. He could not adapt to the new situation. Hell, he couldn't even stand up without falling over.

That didn't make it easier to see his suddenly-awake daughter cry again for the second time in the same day.

Tony felt the plane start banking to the right. He knew that wasn't good, that there was no reason why the pilot would turn, but he also knew there was nothing he could do but hold his daughter close, keep an eye on Senior, and hold on.

He saw Dan speaking into a headset. Tony didn't need to be on the line to know he was asking the rest of the crew what was happening. Whatever he got in response, it made Dan pale.

Another great _clang_ rang out. This time, Tony could identify the source: the right wing. Something had broken. Something important. The plane banked further to the right. Dangerously so. The shaking became even more frighteningly violent. He gripped Tali tighter.

Then, suddenly, the shaking stopped. The plane leveled. Dan regained some color.

They were safe.

A smaller _clang_ came from the wing.

Or not.

Dan moved away from his station and moved to Tony. When he was standing front of him, using the wall to keep his balance, he leaned down to Tony's ear and shouted, "Our starboard wing is compromised. Engines 1 and 2 are out. Pilot thinks we can still get to base, but it'll be a rough landing."

Did he say the _wing_ had almost come off? How did that even _happen_? "Understood," he shouted back. "How long 'til we land?"

"ETA was 10 minutes before the wing became compromised. Pilot's stretching it to 15." Dan moved back to his station.

"What did he say?" Senior asked, voice just barely audible to Tony even as he shouted. Senior had never been good at the whole yelling thing. Just the frown of disappointment. And the casual dismissals.

"We're gonna land soon. It won't be as smooth as they hoped."

"What about the shaking and that sound we heard?"

"Turbulence."

Senior got the idea and leaned back into his seat.

Tony knew Senior didn't believe it was just turbulence, but no good could come of telling him the truth with Tali glued to his side. His daughter was panicked, and rightly so. She needed Tony and Senior to be calm and act like nothing was wrong. So that's what they would do.

The wing periodically made more concerning noise as the pilot continued on their flightpath. For Tali's sake, he did his best to seem unconcerned. To look totally relaxed even as his mind raced. How many times was the wing going to snap or clang or grind, before it gave way? How long would they have to live if that happened? Ten seconds, a minute? How could he pretend everything was okay, when at any moment, his daughter could be living the last seconds of her too-young life?

It wouldn't be fair.

After what seemed an eternity, Tony felt the C-130 start to lose altitude. Not in a dive, but in a controlled descent. They were coming in for their landing. They were going to be oka—

The sound of the wing tearing off the plane's fuselage stopped Tony's heart.

The C-130 was sent almost 45° to the right and rolled to its side—the change in weight and aerodynamics causing the two left engines to turn the entire craft. Tony's stomach did a flip when it did, his back crashing against the wall behind him, his momentum trying to send him in the direction the plane had just been flying.

Tali cried out when her tiny body almost slipped out of her seat. Tony held her as tightly as he could, hoping—praying—his strength would be enough to keep her safe.

The plane hit the runway on its side, the terrible and agonizing sound of metal skidding along asphalt drowning out all other noise. The impact rattled Tony's teeth and sent him slamming against the restraints in front of him.

He lost his hold on Tali.

She let out a scream lost in the deafening sound of grinding metal, and fell into space. Tony grabbed one of her little hands just before she got out of reach. His aim was off, and he ended up with a hand on the sleeve of her long shirt. She looked up at him, screaming, crying. Begging to be saved. Begging to be in his arms.

This wasn't happening. This couldn't _be happening_.

Tony forced his mind to put aside parental panic and focused. He reached out with his other arm and strengthened his grip, grabbing her hand this time instead of her shirt. Then he pulled her up to his chest and wrapped her in his arms. Her new safety harness.

Gravity changed again as the plane righted itself. Tony grimaced through the pain as he once again slammed into wall of the fueslage. He felt—and heard—the plane's remaining wing start digging into the runway, the asphalt tearing it apart. However, the wing also acted as a break.

Slowly but surely, the plane slowed until at last it ground to a halt. Destroyed and useless, but with its fueslage intact.

And more importantly, Tali was safe. Crying, but safe.

Tony held her a little tighter. "You hurt, Senior?"

Senior was silent.

Tony looked to his father as Dan stumbled in their direction. His head had blood on it, and he wasn't moving. "Dad?"

No response. Not even a groan.

"Dad!"

* * *

Jamie waited.

He was good at waiting; he'd done a lot of it in his life. Waiting for his mom to pick him up from football practice. Waiting for his dad to come home. Waiting for the Marines to do more than treat him as a number.

Waiting for his marks to arrive at the traps he set with his team.

Jamie sometimes felt shame for his chosen side profession. But if he didn't do it, someone else would. There wasn't a shortage of people who wanted other people dead, and there wasn't a shortage of people qualified to pull the trigger. Besides, most of the time the people he killed weren't so nice themselves. Rival mobsters, hitmen, dealers.

Today was a mystery target. They'd been given a picture, a flight number, and the destination of that flight. No name or reason or instruction beyond leaving no witnesses.

He always liked how to-the-point Death's representative were.

His burner phone buzzed. He looked at it.

 _Target moving your way. ETA 2 min._

"That them?"

Jamie bit back the sigh he immediately wanted to give. "No one else has these numbers, T."

"Well… Right. Nevermind," Terrence—or T, for short—said, blue eyes and youthful tanned face smiling. He was the newest member of the group, assigned to Jamie for evaluation by their leader, Caine. His youth made him eager and lightning-fast with the trigger, but impatient and inexperienced.

Jamie didn't like him. He didn't like him _at all_.

Jamie kept waiting, mentally counting down the two minutes Caine said.

Six seconds past two minutes, Jamie saw the Target come into view. They were far away, but Jamie had memorized the photo they'd been given. That was their Target.

"Is that our mark?" Terrence asked. Then he pulled out something that made Jamie groan.

The Target's photo.

"You did _not_ bring that with you, kid," Jamie said.

"What?" Terrence asked. "I'm bad with faces."

"And what happens if you're caught with that? Think a cop will just shrug off someone having his shooting victim's picture on them?"

"So I just won't get caught."

Jamie sighed. He was going to have to talk to Caine when this was over; Terrence wasn't going to work out.

The Target moved from one side of the windshield to the other. Trailing them from a distance, Jamie saw Caine and Russell move into view. Jamie's phone buzzed again.

 _Move in._

"Alright, kid. When we get out of the car, don't run. Walk. Walk calmly, as if you and I are meeting up with friends at that cafe across the street. People see fast movement. Act casual, and most people never even notice you."

"Got it."

"Let's go."

Jamie got out of the car first, then Terrence followed. Then they went to join Caine and Russell. Surprisingly, Terrence listened to Jamie's instructions and walked at the same, slow pace as Jamie. Maybe there was a bit of hope for the kid.

They met up with Caine and Russell just as the Target took an unexpected turn into an alleyway. "Think we're compromised, C?" Jamie asked Caine.

"No," said Caine, his serious eyes matched perfectly by his thick black beard. "Target hasn't looked back once."

"That alley might be a good place to do it," said Russell, his green eyes commonly mistaken for friendly instead of their actual ice-cold. "Concealed. Away from the street. Not a lot of foot traffic."

"Good enough. Let's do it."

They rounded the corner the Target just went around.

Only the Target was nowhere in sight.

Something was wrong about this.

Caine took out his silenced Glock 19, and the rest of them followed suit. They moved into the alley, weapons up, advancing steadily yet cautiously. Checking their corners, making as little sound as possible, ears straining to hear their quarry.

Terrence suddenly let out a strangled cry and stumbled back a step, clutching his throat. Jamie turned to him, only to feel a bullet from T's weapon hit him in the chest.

Jamie cried out in agony and fell, slamming into the concrete. A series of shots from Caine and Russell answered the first. Each of them hit Terrence in the back with wet, meaty thuds.

Then Caine and Russell both went down with a quick _pop, pop_ as Terrence's weapon was used to deadly effectiveness.

Terrence slumped forward into the alley wall and didn't move. The Target appeared from behind him, holding Terrence's gun. They moved forward and fired two more rounds into Russell and Caine with cold indifference, then turned the weapon once again on Jamie.

Jamie fought through his pain and fired before they did.

One round hit the Target in the right shoulder, sending their shot wide. His second round missed right, and his third hit the Target's abdomen. The Target moved further into the alley and around a corner, leaving Jamie's fourth shot to miss and hit the wall behind where they had stood. They didn't reappear.

Jamie felt faint. He slumped back, lying on his back again, his only keepsake from his Marine days, his Dog Tag, falling out from under his shirt. He tried to get up again, but it was useless. He found himself short of breath, what little breaths he could take painful and provoking coughing and blood.

Jamie laid there, unable to move, for more than five minutes. Then he started to lose consciousness. At first just as his eyelids feeling heavy, then as his vision darkening. His pulse beating like a rapid drum in his ears. He faintly heard sirens approaching.

Then he knew nothing else.

* * *

A phone rang in front of the man in the black suit. He answered. _"Operative Smith has been retired, sir."_ The voice on the other side of the line was female, and spoke English. Accent was American.

"Was it conducted cleanly?" The man in the black suit asked.

" _The body and weapon have been disposed. No witnesses. No loose ends."_

"Proceed to the safehouse."

 _"Yes, Death."_

The man in the black suit hung up and destroyed the phone. Operative Smith's failure was not unexpected, but the man had been given a warning. He had been wise not to try running.

His family would have had to pay in his place for his failure.

What was he to do? The purpose of the hastily-planned operation had not been fulfilled. The objective had not been secured. Anthony DiNozzo was still a problem to erase.

But the man in the black suit no longer had the luxury of surprise. He required an assessment of his options.

Another phone rang. The man answered. _"The independent contractors failed, sir."_ Like the previous Operative, the voice spoke English, but it belonged a male. The accent was also American.

The eye of the man in the black suit twitched. "Have they been disciplined?"

" _Unneeded, sir. Three have already expired; the fourth is on their way out."_

"Was the Target lost?"

" _It is believed wounded and without transport."_

"Have you tapped city surveillance?"

" _I was awaiting your approval, sir."_

"I give it. Find the Target."

" _It will be done, Death."_

* * *

"How is he?"

Tony sighed heavily. _"It's not good, Boss. Docs say he's got a hairline skull fracture and a grade IIIb concussion, a few broken ribs, a lung with one of those ribs in it, and a fractured left radius. I don't even know what that_ is _."_

Gibbs could hear the anger and worry in Tony's voice. Anger at what happened, and worry that his father might not wake up. With age may have come wisdom, but it came with a body that didn't heal like it used to. "Tali okay?"

Tony sighed even heavier than before. _"She's… She's as good as she can be, I guess."_

"She's scared."

" _Too mild a word for it. She's been hiding under Senior's bed since they brought him in. Refused to come out since."_

Gibbs felt a pain in his gut. When fear gripped a child's heart, they sought what made them feel safe. In Tali's case, that safe spot was out of sight and near family. Kelly had once done something similar when Shannon was hurt in a car accident. "What about you?"

" _What about me?"_

"How are you holding up?"

" _I'm fine."_

Gibbs didn't even need his gut to know Tony was lying. "Talk."

" _Not sure what you want me to say, Boss. My dad's in a medical coma. I've been through a terrorist attack and a plane crash in the same day. My_ daughter _has been through them today. I almost_ lost her _. If I hadn't caught her..."_

There it was: the thought of what _could_ have gone differently that was weighing Tony down. "Can't think of ifs, DiNozzo."

" _How_ can't _I, Boss?"_

"What if Shannon hadn't visited an old friend at Pendleton?"

That changed Tony's tone immediately. _"Boss, I—"_

"Rule #6…"

" _Never say you're sorry."_ Tony was silent for a second, then asked, _"What do I do with this?"_

Gibbs knew he was talking about the flash drive he found in Tali's toy; Tony had briefed he and Vance about it in MTAC.

Before he could respond, Tim walked around the corner. "Boss—got something."

Gibbs switched gears. "Gotta go. Sit tight until we have a new extraction plan, DiNozzo."

" _Boss—"_

Gibbs hung up the phone and walked out from behind the staircase. "Whadda got?"

"The woman Ziva talked to." Tim led Gibbs back to the Bullpen. The monitor between Tim's desk and Tony's old one displayed the driver's license of a pale, red-haired woman in her early thirties.

"The Israeli archive got back to us," said Bishop. "Her name was Diana Woods—daughter of Kent and Samantha Woods, a former US diplomat to Israel."

"What's her connection to Ziva?" Gibbs asked.

"It's like we thought," Tim said. "Woods and Ziva went to the same school as children. Same age, same class."

"Until the school closed."

"Right," said Bishop. "Once that happened, Diana's parents transferred back to the US to treat her bone tumors. She had a pretty normal life until after she graduated high school, then she went to MIT and became a white hat hacker."

"A what?"

"A computer hacker who uses their skills for good, or what they perceive as good," said McGee. "Woods went a step further and operated as an independent security contractor. Companies hire her to test the security of their computer systems. Or, at least they had—until she dropped off the grid six months ago."

Six months? She died two months ago. Where was she the other four? "Anyone report her missing in that time?"

"Yes," Bishop said. "A neighbor, five months ago, here in DC. They filed a report with Metro."

Gibbs didn't need to hear anymore. He moved to his desk and retrieved his badge and sidearm. "You got an address?"

"I just put it in my phone, Boss," McGee said as he and Bishop followed suit and got their own gear.

"Let's go take a look."

"Wherever you're going, change your plans."

Gibbs paused and looked to the second floor. Vance was standing there, hands on the railing in front of him, face serious. "Just got a call, Gibbs. Shooting in Fairfax. Three dead, one critically wounded Marine on their way to the hospital."

Gibbs' eye twitched. Of all times for this to happen, now was about the worst. But, a case was a case, and if a Marine was involved in a shooting, he had a duty to put it on his radar. "Address."

"Already sent to Agent McGee."

Tim's phone beeped just then. "Got it, Boss."

Gibbs turned to the elevator. "Then change of plans. Call Ducky. Tell he and Palmer to meet us there."

* * *

The scene was a mess.

Gibbs was standing in an alley that looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the 90s. Dirt, oil, vomit, and other unmentionables were everywhere. A horrible, gag-inducing smell of alcohol, urine, and blood filled the air like a blanket.

Two bodies were in the middle of the alley, each double-tapped to the torso and shot once in the head. Their blood had pooled around them, soaking both their clothes and the alley ground. The other body was off to the side and slumped face-first against a wall, back riddled with bullets. A third blood stain had another handgun but no accompanying body. Where their wounded Marine had laid before being taken by EMS.

Gibbs tore his gaze away from the road, where Bishop and McGee were taking statements from the two witnesses, and looked to Ducky. "Whadda got, Duck?"

"Three dead men, Jethro," Ducky said, adjusting his hat. "Three dead men who, if I might be so brash, were unlikely to be found in honest business."

Gibbs had long thought the same. None of the bodies had ID or wallets on them. Just burner phones, Glock 19 Handguns with suppressors, and a spare clip of 9×19mm Parabellum. The equipment of a hit team. Only this time, their target fought back, and with their own weapons; the man against the wall was missing his Glock.

Problem was, the Marine had been part of the squad. Which meant whoever they'd been after was good enough to take down four armed attackers.

His gut said there was something to that.

"Cause of death?" Gibbs asked.

"Well, I believe it is safe to say these men did not die a natural death." Ducky looked at the gunshot wounds to one of the bodies. "However, Mr. Palmer and I will need to conduct autopsies to determine which gunshot proved fatal to who."

"They see it coming?"

"You know, it's funny you should ask that," Palmer said, crouched in front of the body slumped against the wall.

"Funny?"

Palmer withered under the look Gibbs gave him. "Well, you know, because this guy here probably never even knew what hit him. He got shot _nine_ times, Gibbs. All to the back. His lights would've been out almost instantly."

Gibbs looked to Palmer's right, where the wall the body rested against fell back a few feet. There was a shallow indent there, just large enough for a person to hide behind without being immediately seen. If someone took more than half a second to look, whoever hid there would have been spotted, but if the searcher was sloppy, high on adrenaline—then it became an ideal location for a surprise attack.

"He went down first," Gibbs said, pointing to the man against the wall.

"How can you tell?"

Gibbs moved to the indent in the wall and stood in it. "From where he'd been standing, he wouldn't have seen me." He moved back out into the open, then made a motion as if he was taking an attacker's weapon. "Which made him vulnerable."

"And let the killer take his weapon." Palmer looked to the other bodies and the Marine's blood stain, then back to the man against the wall. "In trying to take out the shooter, his buddies put most of these bullets in him."

He would've been used as a shield, Gibbs thought, visualizing the event. The shooter takes the weapon of one attacker, then uses his body to shield them from the other three while they take them down one by one by one. Each with two shots in the kill zone and one to the head. They had been skilled. _Very_ skilled.

His gut said that was an exceedingly important detail.

"I believe we have learned all we can without further examination," Ducky said. "Mr. Palmer—would you be so kind as to prepare that one for transport?"

"Sure thing, Doctor." Palmer carefully slid the man down the rest of the wall. Then he carefully flipped the body onto its back.

When he did, something fell out of the man's jacket. A small, blood-stained photograph. Blank side facing up.

Gibbs picked it up.

Then he froze.

The photo was of a familiar woman with dark hair and intense eyes that spoke volumes of the danger she posed to those who threatened her.

Ziva.

These men had been out to kill Ziva. She had fought back. She had gotten away.

She was in DC.

* * *

 **Someone, though I cannot remember who, said they thought last cliffhanger evil. I said that I believed better ones were still to come. They didn't believe me. Perhaps the rest of you can be fair judges.**

 **Well, so much for a quicker and longer update, huh? I know last chapter I said I hoped that would come to pass, but it did not. I apologize, again, for my inconsistent update schedule. I know quite a few of you have said I do not need to beat myself up over it, but I will still drive myself to get better at consistency.**

 **As the first example of a credit song in this story, I suggest "Ninja Tracks - Spectrum". To me, I find this track to fit with the end of the chapter, specifically the very last lines. It has a sound that reminds me much of Ziva's theme.**

 **Thank you all for reading, and if you enjoyed, please be sure to share or suggest this story to a friend.**

 **See you soon.**


	7. Chapter 7

**It only took me three months, but I've returned yet again. My most sincere apologies for taking so long this time, but take some heart this time. I've been very consistent recently in my writing, meaning in how often I write and what I work on. Still working on consistent word counts, but it's been really, really flowing for more than a month now. I am very encouraged by my recent tear, and hope that translates into more frequent updates on this! Of course, I've said that before, so no promises.**

 **Okay, long paragraph over.**

 **Thank you, all who reviewed, or favorited, or followed since I last updated. Rest assured, while I am not replying to guest reviewers on this story (there are many, and I want to keep my author's notes on this short), I read all of them and take them into account. So thanks again.**

 **Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.**

* * *

" _Repeat that for me, Gibbs."_

"Ziva's in DC."

There was several long moments of silence. Then, Vance said, _"Holy hell."_

That wasn't far from what Gibbs himself was thinking. "I need you to ask a favor from the Metro CP."

" _I'll get you access to every camera you need."_ Gibbs sometimes found it uncanny how Vance could anticipate requests. Uncanny, but helpful. Most of the time. _"But keep this_ quiet. _"_

"Press could open this up."

" _And if Ziva's here without telling us, there must be a damn good reason."_

"Tony needs to know."

" _On that, we disagree. DiNozzo's got more than enough on his plate."_

"I said he needs to know, not that he needs to know _now_. Nothing to say at this point."

" _Get back here when you're finished with the scene. I'm splitting your team."_

Gibbs' eye twitched. "Why?"

" _Keep that eye in place, Gibbs; this is out of necessity. You're now handling three cases. You need reinforcements."_

"Understood."

" _And, Gibbs: I mean it about DiNozzo."_

"I'm not in the habit of distracting someone while their life is threatened."

Vance hummed. _"Make it fast, Gibbs. You've got a lot of ground to cover."_ The line went dead.

Gibbs lowered the phone from his ear as Bishop walked up to him, Ducky and Palmer right next to her with the gurney carrying the last body from the hired guns. "Where to next, Boss? Diana Woods' house?"

"Metro?" McGee added. Gibbs could tell he was anxious to start looking for Ziva.

"Nope," Gibbs said. "Navy Yard. Director needs to talk."

McGee nodded. Gibbs saw how he forced that anxiety to the side. Mark of a good Agent. "Okay. You driving?"

"Yes. Let's go."

* * *

The Squadroom was louder than usual when Gibbs stepped off the elevator with his team. Or, it seemed louder. Might be the headache Gibbs felt coming on. He needed coffee.

He climbed the stairs to the second floor, Bishop and McGee behind him. This concerned them as much as it did him.

"This feel weird to you?" Bishop asked. Gibbs knew from the volume of her voice she was asking Tim.

"What feels weird?" Asked McGee.

"Picking up new Agents for the team."

"Nope."

"Not even a little?" Her voice was casual, but Gibbs' gut said she was actually surprised.

"Not really. Why, you think it's strange?"

"It's just… I don't know. Doesn't feel right, adding new team members."

"We're all NCIS Agents. Working with people outside the Team is bound to happen."

"Yes, but not as closely as this. I'm so used to you, Tony, Gibbs—not anyone else. After you work with someone for so long, it doesn't seem right to work with someone else in the same way."

Just wait until you've been in NCIS Agent for 25 years, Gibbs thought. Franks, Dobbs, Blackadder, Jackson, Kate, Ziva, Tony. A small fraction of the Agents who he had worked under, worked with, or supervised. A lot of them were gone, now.

Gibbs reached the second floor and went to the Director's Office. Vance was standing in front of his desk when Gibbs marched through the assistant's office and opened Vance's door. Two NCIS Agents were standing next to the meeting table. One man, one woman. Gibbs recognized the woman immediately: Alexandra Quinn, of FLETC.

He gave her a nod when he entered the room. "Quinn."

"Gibbs," she returned, not unpleasantly. "Have you _aged_ since we last saw each other in person?"

"Plenty. More bullet holes, too."

"Agents Gibbs, McGee, Bishop—thanks for knocking," Vance said. Gibbs just barely caught the dry tone in his voice. "Say hi to Agents Alexandra Quinn and Nicholas Torres. I've assigned them to your team until further notice."

Gibbs looked back to Quinn. "You're back in field work?"

She nodded. "Felt it was time."

He stepped to the side, letting McGee and Bishop catch up to Quinn, and approached the man named Torres. He had an anxious air to him. Eyes that smiled at you while at the same time searching for your darkest secrets. Gibbs knew the type. Deep cover operative. Until recently, at least.

"Still going by someone else's name?" It was better to be blunt than kind with Agents of this type. Gibbs knew. He'd been one.

Torres' easy expression didn't change, but Gibbs saw his eyes reassessing. "You, too?"

"Once. Before your time."

Torres nodded. It was a half respectful, half amused gesture. "I believe that."

Gibbs just stared at the younger man. Always, the young poked fun at the old, but the old knew things the young didn't. This was especially true in law enforcement and military personnel. There would be a time—and, Gibbs' gut said, soon—when Torres found the strength of his youth couldn't solve a problem he encountered.

Gibbs would be there when that happened, to teach him what he'd done wrong. Just as he'd been there when it happened to Tony, McGee, Kate, Ziva, Bishop. Just as Franks had been there for him, and a dozen other men Gibbs had known during his Marine days. Teaching. Such was the nature of old.

He needed coffee.

"Special Agent Timothy McGee," Tim said, walking up to Gibbs' side and offering a hand. "Good to meet you."

"Nick Torres." Torres took the offered hand, offering one of his easy smiles. Gibbs saw it still wasn't fully genuine. Old habits.

He turned back to Vance. "Can we get back to work, Director?"

"They can," Vance said, sitting back down in his chair. "Stay a moment, will you, Gibbs?"

Gibbs caught the look in Vance's eyes. The subtle hint of urgency. Whatever he needed to say was important. Very important.

He looked to his team, both old and new members. "McGee, Quinn—Bullpen. Review anything we can from Metro."

"They have old evidence related to a case?" Quinn asked.

Gibbs added to McGee, "And fill her in."

"On it, Boss," McGee said, then turned to Quinn. "Shall we?"

As they left the room, Gibbs looked at Bishop and Torres. "Diana Woods' house."

"On it." Bishop walked away, Torres following. They shut the door behind them.

Gibbs turned to Vance. He said nothing. Just stared. Waiting.

Vance pressed the hidden control at his desk. Gibbs kept staring as blinds folded down over the window, the door sealed and locked, and the electronic signal scrambler activated, leaving the room isolated and secure.

"Well?" Gibbs asked.

"We need to discuss DiNozzo," Vance said.

"Evac?"

"Yes."

"Explains the security."

"I don't like how our last attempt feels."

Gibbs didn't either. The report said it was a faulty part, but that felt too… Easy. There was something more sinister there. More dangerous. He felt it in his gut. "You have a plan?"

"You're not going to like it."

Gibbs waited.

Vance leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. "We split them up."

He was right: Gibbs didn't like it. His eye twitched.

"Don't give me that look." Vance sat up straight again, folding his arms on his lap. His debate posture. "You know the hand we've been dealt."

"There are still other options."

"None of which increase the odds of success."

"Tali's been split from her family once already, Director."

"Only this would be temporary."

"You can't know that." They both knew the attack on the Ritz-Carlton wasn't random. They both knew at least Levi was hunting DiNozzo. They both felt the _accident_ with the C-130 carrying he and his family was no accident.

Rule #39.

Vance nodded once. A simple motion, accompanied by a faint sigh. "You're right on that, I can't know, and that's the worst part. Makes the chair feel like a stone. But no matter how _I_ feel, we still need to make sure DiNozzo reaches us safely. That flash drive he found might be the key to all of this."

The Marine in Gibbs saw the tactical reasoning in Vance's mind. The father in him hated it. "Land, sea, or air?"

"Air," Vance said. "Just so happens, there are a two companies of… Advisers coming home from Iraq. Their C-130s are due to land at the same base as DiNozzo."

"Stop-and-go?"

"Yes. SECNAV has already reassigned three to get the DiNozzos Stateside, and there's a medical team that will take care of DiNozzo Senior."

"Security?"

"Six planes in total. Three loaded, three empty. Six Agents from the local office. One to accompany each VIP, and three to go in the decoy planes. No official cargo or passenger manifests. Same departure time and flight routes to DC."

"Fuel?"

"The Air Force has a half dozen fuel tankers on standby."

Gibbs sighed quietly, thinking. Vance's plan was sound, but there were a lot of moving parts. Gibbs never liked complicated. "DiNozzo won't like this."

"Then you give your own approval?"

Gibbs nodded.

Vance returned it. "I'll keep you updated on the convoy's status."

Gibbs took the subtle dismissal, and moved to the door. He needed coffee.

Then he needed to find Ziva.

* * *

"It's okay, Tali," Tony said, keeping a smile on his face for his daughter's benefit.

Tali didn't see the smile. She was too busy hiding in his chest. Away from the NCIS Agents. Away from the sound of the runway.

Away from the gurney holding the comatose Senior.

Damnit, Dad, he thought. I need you here. "You're gonna be just fine, Sweetie."

Tali quietly spoke in Hebrew. He didn't catch the word, but he knew the tone. Fear. Fear of being separated. His heart ached.

"You don't need to be scared. See, look." Tony turned Tali around to look at the NCIS Agent assigned to her plane, a middle-aged woman with dark hair and equally dark, friendly eyes. Morgan. A mother of three and twenty-year NCIS vet. She had a calming presence. "Ms. Morgan will take _great_ care of you while I can't."

Tali turned again and reburied herself.

He vowed, at that moment, to punch Vance for this.

Of all the times to split them up, this was as bad as it got. Tali was vulnerable right now. Fragile. Terrified. She _needed_ him. She needed Senior. She needed safety and familiarity. She needed her mother.

How did she arrive at NCIS that day, so calm and happy?

"Sir."

Tony looked up as one of the Agents spoke to him. "Yes?"

"The pilots just called in," the Agent said, returning a phone to his pocket. He was one of the decoy Agents, going with a decoy plane. "We just three minutes to showtime."

Not long enough.

Tony pulled away from Tali, placing his hands on his daughter's cheeks. He could feel they were a little damp. "Sweetie. I want you to know something, okay?"

Tali said nothing, attempting to bury herself again.

"Not yet. Look at me for a bit."

She did.

"Tali—I want you to know that I love you. I may not have been around much before, but I love you. More than anything else. And I want you to know that it's all going to be okay. We'll be apart, but we'll be okay."

At that, Tali whimpered, and he felt an overwhelming urge to hold her close.

Tony forced it aside and took out the stuffed animal in his jacket pocket. "And it's gonna be okay, because Gibbs is going to watch you for me. I want you to keep him close, always, alright?"

For the first time that day, Tali smiled. A very, very small one—so small Tony nearly missed it. It still warmed his heart.

He brought her close and hugged her. "That's my girl."

The C-130s arrived shortly after. The first one landed and rolled to a stop in front and head of them. The team tending Senior ran forward, disappearing inside. The plane took off shortly after. Then the second plane landed and took up the spot the last one had occupied. It took off after taking on the decoy Agent. Then the third plane landed.

Time to go.

Tony gave Tali one more squeeze. "You have to go with Ms. Morgan, now."

"No."

The one word crushed Tony's existence. But he _had_ to be firm. "Go, Tali. You have to." He pushed her back, kissing her forehead, and Morgan took her hand. "You'll be okay. I love you. Keep Gibbs close."

Tali cried, and he hated himself for helping bring those tears, but she didn't try to break from Morgan and go back to him. Stronger than she should be at her age.

Then, they were gone. Tony was alone again. Just like he'd been most of his life.

Two planes later, he was riding in a C-130 for the second time that day.

Hopefully, this flight would go better.

* * *

Autopsy smelled of blood and disinfectant.

Ducky and Palmer were working on one of the hitmen from the alley, the other two on the other examination tables. Gibbs walked in just as Ducky was telling Palmer about an old case before Palmer's time. "Talk to me, Duck."

"Ah, Jethro," Ducky said. "I was just telling Mr. Palmer about young Corporal Alexander Bartholomew Alexopoulos."

"One mouthful of a name," Palmer said.

"Attempted a contact killing," Gibbs said. "Shot in an alley in January of '98. Didn't expect his mark to defend themselves."

"Very good, Jethro," said Ducky. He looked back to Palmer. "What struck me most about that case was not _what_ happened that night, but _how_ it happened. You see, Mr. Palmer, Corporal Alexopoulos fired his issued service weapon eight times in that alley, but did not hit his intended target even once. On the other side, the man he was to kill that night fired thrice, hit thrice, and any one of them would have proven fatal within seconds."

"A complete reversal of how things should have gone," Palmer said. "Well, not that the intended victim _should_ have died, but you know—"

Gibbs gave Palmer a look, and Palmer cut off his own sentence. Then Gibbs looked to Ducky. "The case. Whadda got?"

"Not much you don't already know, I'm afraid." Ducky said. "All three victims were in good health until this morning. Cause of death was gunshot. We pulled nine slugs from this young man here." Ducky glanced down at the body between he and Palmer. Gibbs recognized it as the one slumped face-first into the alley wall. "One of those slugs ruptured his heart. Death was _very_ quick."

Gibbs nodded at the other bodies. "And those two?"

"Any one of the the three rounds they took would have proved fatal. Considering who fired them, I am not surprised."

Gibbs was surprised the two in their chests didn't overlap. But there was something else there that bothered him. The Marine was still alive, his weapon had been fired, and there was a blood trail leading further into the alley that they'd lost after a few drops. That could only mean he'd managed to fight back, hit Ziva. She needed medical attention, and the longer she was out there, the worse she would get. He needed to find her.

One thing at a time, he told himself. "You ID any of them?"

"We took some blood samples not long ago," Palmer said. "Abby has them now."

Gibbs turned and moved back to the elevator. "Tell me if you find something else."

"I wasn't done."

Gibbs paused, turning back. He looked at Ducky expectantly.

Ducky moved to one of the other bodies, the one with the beard, and picked up a magnifying glass. "Do you recall, Jethro, the details of Corporal Alexopoulos' case?"

Gibbs stepped over to Ducky, standing at the head of the examination table. "He was branded."

"Yes. The wound was self-inflicted. A simple circle on the inside of his upper arm. You and Mike Franks determined the Corporal wished to recruit his friends into the business of death, using his brand as a sort of marker—a signature." He looked up and held out the magnifying glass. "He was not the only one who sought such a thing."

Gibbs leaned down to look through the magnifying glass. There, just below the left collarbone, was a small burn mark. It was a pair of thin vertical lines, less than a sixteenth of an inch long and a quarter that wide. Without the magnifying glass, it was very difficult to see.

"Not much of an ID," Gibbs said. "Meant to be subtle."

"Well, I can't stipulate on intention, Jethro. All I can say is that burn is highly unusual. Very small, yet it caused enough tissue damage to leave a permanent mark."

"A brand, like Alexopoulos."

"It most certainly appears so. However, I leave final determination to you."

"They have them, too?" Gibbs nodded to the other bodies.

"No. Mr. Palmer and I checked over the others when we noticed the burn. It seems only he has one." Ducky pointed down at the body next to them. "It appears the burn was of his own design."

"Abby working on it?"

"We gave her a picture along with the blood samples."

That was all Gibbs needed. He turned and left autopsy. This time, Ducky didn't stop him.

He entered the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor.

He needed a Caf Pow.

* * *

Abby was staring at the computer when Gibbs entered her lab, Caf Pow in hand. This would make her seventh of the day. Half the Record. When she turned to him, he saw something in her eyes that set him on edge.

Sadness.

This couldn't be good.

"Whadda got?" He asked.

"Ziva."

He gave her a look.

Abby gestured to the screen. "Major Mass Spec was running blood and bullets you found at the scene, Gibbs. Most of of them match our dead guys in the alley, but there was one sample you found that wasn't from any of them…"

"Ziva."

Abby nodded, her eyes subdued. "One of the bullets the Marine fired had her blood on it. A couple samples you got from the ground also matched. She's hurt, Gibbs. She's hurt _bad_."

Gunshots were never minor wounds. "Our shooters have names?"

Anger flashed in Abby's eyes for the briefest moment, only to fade just as quickly. Gibbs understood; Abby was worried, and she thought he wasn't caring enough. She brought up headshots of all three bodies down in autopsy. "None of our dead guys have DNA in the system," she said, voice blank. "At least, not DNA that identifies them. I _did_ find that each of them have left DNA at crime scenes in the past. Unsolved robberies, murders, kidnappings."

"Mercenary work."

"Right. The particularly bad kind. This guy here especially." She enlarged the picture of the shooter with the burn mark—the one with the beard. "He's had his hair found at five murder scenes, each time where the victim was found double-tapped to the chest and once in the head with a 9mm. None of those cases went anywhere."

"He was a pro."

"Yes, but that just makes me _mad_ , Gibbs! How do we have so many people in the world that get _good_ at murdering people? _No_ _one_ should be good at that!"

Gibbs looked back at her. He saw that same anger in her eyes, but it was directed at someone else. The shooters down in autopsy. The murderous men and women they dealt with everyday. He always found it amazing Abby still had the ability to expect the best from people.

He hated seeing her faith in good so infrequently well-placed.

Gibbs stepped closer, looking down into her furious eyes. "Abbs… She's gonna be okay."

Abby held her anger for several long seconds. Then she broke. She moved in, wrapping her arms around him, lowering her head to rest it on his shoulder. Like a child seeking comfort from a parent.

His heart ached at how much the action reminded him of Kelly.

"I'm just so scared for her, Gibbs," Abby said quietly. "She's out there, somewhere. All alone. Hurt. Afraid. People are _after_ her! What if they find her first? How could we face DiNozzo if we don't get to her in time? How can we face the _mirror_ if we don't?"

"Abbs…"

"We lost her once already. We're _so_ _close_ to getting her back, and just as close to losing her all over again. I don't want to do another funeral."

"Abby." Gibbs placed a hand on her shoulder and took a small step back, creating a few inches of space between them. Then he looked into her eyes. "We're going to find her." The Marine in him hated promising something he couldn't be sure of.

The father in him was adamant he was going to make it happen.

"But what if we're too late?"

"Then we make sure whoever's responsible never has a chance of getting away."

Abby reached in for another hug, then quickly broke away. "Thanks, Gibbs."

He held out the Caf Pow. "Burn mark?"

At that, a corner of Abby smiled. She took the Caf Pow and took a long sip, her other hand working on the keyboard. "It's a brand, just like Ducky thought. A very _tiny_ one. Probably made from a homemade branding iron. My bet's on a coil form a toaster."

"Abbs."

The photos from autopsy went away. In their place was a single, group photo. A college fraternity.

The shooter down in autopsy was in the middle, first row.

"You found him?" Gibbs walked around her station and stepped up to the screen on the wall, studying. The man looked much younger than he had been at the time of his death, but the resemblance was impossible to dismiss.

"Yes. Turns out, in the mid 90's, a college fraternity made headlines when a police investigation uncovered evidence that they were _branding_ their new members with a pair of vertical lines. They were ordered to abandon the practice or be forced apart. But not before our guy got the burn of honor."

She brought up a more recent image. A driver's license. The shooter's.

"Say hello to Caine Saunders, Gibbs. One of our bad guys."

Gibbs stared at the license. Caine was smiling when the picture had been taken, showing his mouth full of straight white teeth. Even in photo form, Gibbs still saw the darkness in his eyes. "Get anything else on him?"

"Unmarried, no kids, no girlfriend, if his social media accounts can be believed. Works as a freelance photographer. Easy explanation for why he's been to LA, New York, Seattle, Chicago, Austin, and DC in the last few months."

"Traveling for contract killings."

"Probably."

"You get an address?"

Abby hit a single key on her keyboard. An address appeared on screen. "Yes. Yes I did."

"Send it to McGee." He started for the elevator.

Abby made a sound of protest. "Hey, hey, hey! Forgetting something?"

Gibbs walked back, handing the Caf Pow over to Abby. Then he added a kiss to her forehead, then went for the elevator again. "That's good work, Abbs."

"I try, Gibbs."

* * *

"So what did this Diana Woods get herself into?"

"Not sure," Bishop replied, looking over a dusty bookcase while Torres checked the kitchen. "Whatever it was, it got her killed. Almost got two others killed, too."

"I have a hard time believing she was ever in danger in the first place," Torres said, exiting the kitchen and looking around the living room, still wearing his casual clothing. She found that irritating. "This place is pretty clean for being abandoned."

In that, Torres had a point. The house was in a gated community. Large, but not huge. Well-kept. _Very_ expensive. If not for the layer of fine dust on most surfaces—and the rotting food in the fridge—Bishop would never have guessed Diana Woods hadn't stepped in here in months.

Something about that made her suspicious. Gibbs probably would have known why.

"Kitchen's clear?"

"Of anything I want to touch. Pretty sure I saw the milk look at me when I opened the door."

"Bedroom?"

"That's a little forward, don't you think?"

Bishop glared.

Torres held up his hands in a placating manner, a genuinely apologetic look appearing in his eyes. "Sorry, sorry. Last cover I had was a playboy. Sometimes it's hard to turn off one ID and take up a new one."

Bishop accepted the apology, but still frowned. "And this is just another identity for you? Another part to play?"

Torres didn't answer. He walked over to the coffee table and picked up a binder lying on it. He flipped through it. "Related to her work?"

"Probably. Quick reads I gave most of them were tech notes. Tendencies of a particular system. Strategies for breaking the firewalls of a client."

"Geek stuff. I don't speak geek very well." He placed the binder back on the table.

"Not a lot of people speak her level of geek. Even I struggle with it."

"'Even I'? That's a little arrogant, don't you think?"

"I was in the NSA."

Torres went quiet, his eyebrows raised an inch higher than normal. Then he nodded once and turned around. "Okay. Must be complicated stuff."

"Very." Bishop moved away from the bookcase, frown still on her face. They'd been here over an hour, with nothing to show for it. That was expected. Unlike most cop shows she watched, an actual, thorough search of a suspect or victim's home took time. Lots of it. And in a house this big, an investigator should expect it to take longer. Something that could make or break a case could be anywhere. Under a pot. Inside a magazine. In a shower head. Once, she'd had to fish a flash drive from a used toilet.

She still shuddered at that memory.

She looked to the binders as Torres moved to another room. She'd checked over them already, but Torres handling them brought them back to the forefront of her mind. The techno-babble was written in some kind of shorthand Woods used, making it even more difficult for her to read. That type of computer work hadn't been her thing at the NSA.

And yet, she felt herself drawn to them again.

She walked over and opened a binder. The tiny, cramped words of Woods' shorthand hurt her eyes, but she ignored the minor discomfort and flipped through the binder. When nothing stuck out, she picked up another. And another after that. As she looked through the fourth binder, she saw it. A ripped corner of a page.

Normal, by the standards of most. Abnormal by the standards Diana Woods displayed in her home. Everything was kept in order. Nothing was broken. Everything was clean. There was no way she would see a ripped page and not replace it.

This had been ripped intentionally.

Bishop looked around the room, searching. For what, she wasn't really sure. Just searching. Doing what Gibbs would do: follow her gut.

Roughly a minute into her search, she noticed the house's fireplace. It was a very beautiful thing. Carved rock, stones surrounding it and matching rocks going up to the ceiling.

Had one of her brother's not been in construction for a summer, Bishop wouldn't have noticed that one rock had been mortared more recently than its neighbors.

"Torres," she called out, advancing on the fireplace.

"What? You got something?" Torres' voice got louder as he reentered the room.

"Maybe. Let's see."

Bishop took out her knife and cut into the mortar. It gave more easily than it should have. Soon, she had the rock free, a pile of debris at her feet, Torres holding a camera behind her, having already taken several photographs of her actions. She pulled the rock free.

There, folded against the side of the flue, was the corner of paper.

Bishop waited for Torres to take pictures, then reached in and pulled it out. She waited again for pictures, and once Torres was done, she opened the tiny paper. Two words were written on it.

 _Thanatos Industries._

Maybe, just once, life _was_ like one of her crime shows.

* * *

"Thanatos Industries is a shell company," McGee said, looking at his computer. "There are no financial records, no tax returns, no assets. The only thing that I can come up with is a domain name registered in Switzerland."

"Keep digging. There's something there."

"Whatever it is, it can't be found on a computer, Boss."

"Then find out where it _can_ be found." Gibbs looked across the Bullpen at Tim, gaze intense.

McGee sighed lightly and nodded. "On it."

Gibbs looked to the previously-unoccupied desk next to McGee's. "Quinn."

Quinn looked up, gaze questioning. She looked confused. "Huh? What?"

Gibbs just waited.

"Oh, that's right. This is a thing you do. You want people to expect what you want."

"And what am I expecting?"

"Update on Metro." She stood up with a few pieces of paper in her hands and walked over. "According to a report filed three hours ago, a couple encountered a woman matching Ziva David's description."

Gibbs stared, waiting. Not showing the hope he felt.

"The unidentified woman was hurt, bleeding badly. The couple thought she'd been shot. They offered to call 911, but the woman refused and kept moving. The couple called anyway to report the incident."

"When and where?"

"Thirty-two blocks east and just under an hour after the shooting."

Little over three miles, in DC terms. Ziva had been making good progress for someone shot. He expected nothing less. "Cameras in the area?"

Quinn brought up a map of DC on the screen behind Gibbs' desk. Red dots appeared where there were public surveillance cameras, ATMs, stop lights, and business security cameras facing the street. Two green dots represented the shooting and the sighting. At least, Gibbs thought that was what they were.

"Closest camera is a block away. Closest to the location of the shooting is even further," Quinn said.

She was avoiding them, Gibbs thought. She was, still. If Ziva was avoiding cameras, there would be a good reason. And it would be bad. "Couple try to follow?"

"The boyfriend did. According to the report, he lost her within a minute."

Definitely Ziva. "Keep looking for more sightings," he said.

"On it." Quinn returned to her desk.

"Anything else from Woods' home?" He looked to where Torres and Bishop stood next to her desk, still geared up. Waiting for Gibbs' order to leave with him and search Caine Saunders' apartment.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," Bishop said. "Looked like the house wasn't even touched while she was away."

"And you still found nothing."

"Maybe she took everything important with her," Torres offered.

"Or it was removed after she left."

That quieted both Bishop and Torres.

After a thoughtful moment, Bishop nodded. "It would explain why Woods went through so much trouble just to hide a mention of Thanatos Industries."

"But not _why_ ," Gibbs said.

"She knew what was coming after she left," Torres said. He sounded more certain of his offered explanation.

"Not an answer. What made her so scared she left everything behind? What did she have that nearly got Tali and Ziva killed along with her? Who was after her?"

His gut said the same person behind the untraceable transfers in the accounts of Petty Officers Johnson and Bradley and former Mossad Officer Levi.

His team said nothing.

Gibbs was about to have them commit the silent thoughts and theories that rang in the head of every investigator, when his phone beeped. He took it from his pocket with the intent of turning it off, when he paused.

After Fornell was ambushed, Gibbs had hidden motion detectors in his home. They were a cheap model, but still had the capability of sending an alert to a phone if the homeowner was away. McGee had needed to make some modifications so the message could still be sent to Gibbs' basic model phone.

One of the detectors had just gone off.

His gut clenched.

"Boss?" McGee had been first to notice the change in Gibbs' body language. Benefit of years of working for him.

Gibbs didn't answer. He turned back to look at the screen behind him. He noted the location of the shooting, of the sighting of Ziva. He noted another location, in the same direction Ziva seemed to be heading. There weren't any cameras there.

Gibbs stood, grabbing his badge and sidearm. He went for the elevator.

"Gibbs?"

"Keep going what you're doing, McGee." He stopped in front of Torres and Bishop. "Saunders' apartment. I'll meet you there." Then he continued to the elevator.

"Where are you going?"

Gibbs said nothing. He entered the elevator, and pressed the button for the ground floor.

Within five minutes, he was outside the building and driving down the road.

* * *

The last phone in front of the man rang. He answered. _"NCIS has looked into Thanatos Industries."_ The voice was male. Accent was American. The same Operative as before.

The cleaners had missed a piece of evidence. They would be disciplined. Nevertheless, the failure was minor; Thanatos had long been abandoned. "Irrelevant. What else?"

" _Anthony DiNozzo is being moved again. Multiple planes. Multiple decoys."_

"Destination?"

" _DC."_

"Have scouts on the ground before he arrives. We will take him when he lands."

" _It will be done."_

The man went silent. Waiting.

The Operative understood the meaning in the silence. _"We have located the Target."_

"Options?"

" _Per your orders, all Task Forces are on lockdown due to Task Force Tel Aviv being compromised. Outside contractors can be produced on short notice."_

"Do so. No witnesses."

" _Yes, Death."_

* * *

Gibbs turned the engine off, allowing the car to roll the rest of the way to the house in relative silence. He turned into the driveway, stopped, then got out. As usual, the neighbors were quiet. Not even a barking dog.

He opened his door—unlocked, like always—and took out his sidearm. He had his suspicions, but better to be sure.

He cleared right, then left. Nothing out of place. Stairs were untouched. He moved to the living room, checking his corners, keeping his sidearm at Modified Low Ready.

Someone had been through his cabinets. Several were wide open, others only partially so. His first aid kit was missing. So was one of his bottles of bourbon.

The door to his basement was also cracked open.

He advanced slowly, never letting his guard down. He opened the door fully, and entered the basement.

The lights were on. The air smelled of blood and sawdust and alcohol.

And—bloody, grimacing, freshly bandaged, and nursing bourbon from a jar—Ziva sat on a stool in the back.

Her eyes went up to him. They were harder than he remembered, and more haunted than he'd ever seen them. "Hello, Gibbs."

* * *

 **So things happened. Some small things, some big things.**

 **Mostly small things.**

 **There was a lot more set up in this chapter than I intended. I will need to work on that with my next update.** **Still, at least this update was longer than the last. I hope you enjoyed.**

 **Since no one has said not to, I will provide another credit song. This chapter's credit song is "Krale - Memoirs of the Forgotten" This song has the right theme to match the scene above. It's not happy, not sad, just atmospheric of the moment where Ziva and Gibbs come face to face again.**

 **Thank you all for reading. If you enjoyed reading, please share or recommend this to a friend or friends. And if you _really_ enjoyed reading, please leave a comment. They are the lifeblood of all writers, and they do not take long to leave.**

 **See you soon.**


	8. Chapter 8

**I'm back with another update! One month sooner than the last. I'm setting records of some sort. I know a few of you - both with accounts on this site and without - were really anxiously awaiting the next chapter, so I apologize again for taking so long and having you wait as long as I do.** **That tear I was talking about, last update? Not consistent like I hoped. Still there in bursts, but some personal stuff derailed be pretty good.**

 **My goodness, people. You guys are awesome. We're rocketing way beyond the averages of any story I've written, and we keep climbing. Thank you, and I do hope you enjoy this update.**

 **Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.**

* * *

Gibbs holstered his sidearm and walked down the steps. Ziva remained on the stool, drinking bourbon, watching him easily. There was a pistol on the table behind her. A Glock 19, fitted with a silencer. If Abby were to test it, he knew it would come back as belonging to one of the hitmen.

He stopped three paces from Ziva and stared at her. She stared back, her eyes haunted and, he realized, pained, and not just from her injury. She looked thinner than she was when she left. Not unhealthy. Lean. Fit. As much as she had been when she first arrived at NCIS, fresh from field assignments from Mossad.

What had she gotten into in the last months?

Gibbs turned right and grabbed a jar, then dumped its contents onto the table. He turned back, pulled out another stool, then poured himself bourbon. Then he sipped his drink, like it was water instead of hard alcohol, and looked back to Ziva. He said nothing, silently staring. Expecting.

"I know what you are thinking," Ziva said.

Gibbs sipped his bourbon.

"That I should not be here. That I should be dead."

"No. ID'd Diana."

"Mossad should have the first time. I had thought my history I would have warranted a better investigation, but I was mistaken. Or maybe I have just been expired by you and your team."

Spoiled, Gibbs silently corrected, taking note of the tone she had in her voice when she spoke of the team. It was blunt. Guarded. She thought herself an outsider. A stranger, like she had been years ago.

"Regardless, you did not expect me after all this time. After you, you think, why would I leave my child in the cold night, watching her home burn down? Only a horrible human being and horrible mother would leave their child, and surely, you think, if there was one thing I would commit myself to, it would be my child. Surely, you think, I would have returned to her, if I had been somehow lived through the inferno. And I should have. I should have made a different choice, that night—that night where I added fuel to the fires so that Mossad would send help. That night where I watched them from afar, as they took Tali to safety. I should have gone with her."

Gibbs heard the slight tremor in her voice. The slight glisten to her eyes. But no tears. No sobs. No total break in her armor. She didn't let that happen. He took another sip from the jar.

Ziva stared at him, her glistening eyes hard. Then after several seconds, she sighed, looking down to the floor. "Do not hold back because I have been gone, Gibbs. Yell at me. Shout. Rage. Scold. Do _something!_ "

So she wanted him to explode. Get angry for not contacting him. Not coming back with Tali. She wanted a reaction. He would give her one.

Gibbs stood up from his stool, putting his jar on the table. He advanced the rest of the way to Ziva, standing right next to her, his taller frame towering now that she was sitting down, his eyes iron. He could see her tense when she looked up at his approach. She her steel herself for the verbal lashing she expected.

Then he reached down and hugged her, careful of her wounded side. "Welcome home."

He felt pure anxiety melt from her body. She hugged him back, though with one arm; she didn't move the one on her injured side. They stayed like that for only a few seconds, then Gibbs broke away, pulled his stool closer, and sat down again. Then he waited.

"Thank you," she said, her eyes showing hints of a smile, before that hardened quality took over again. "Tony and Tali. Are they okay?"

"What have you heard?"

"Little. I was in the air when their hotel was attacked. I did not even _know_ it was attacked until my first layover. Are they _okay_?" There was a little more force behind the repeated word. A desire, no—a _need_ to know.

"Physically, they're fine," Gibbs said. He decided then not to share anything about the incident with the C-130. Not yet. She'd already had quite the day. "DiNozzo changed rooms when he saw them coming."

Ziva nodded, taking a breath. He could see some of the tension leave her body at hearing Tony and the child they made were safe. "And what about emotionally?"

"Shaken." That, at least, needed to be shared. "Tali's shutting down, seeking what's familiar. Tony's at his limits."

"But he won't say."

"No."

"And they are safe."

"Yeah."

Ziva looked at him for a long moment, her gaze analyzing. "You have said nothing of Tony's father."

He'd been hoping to avoid that, if he could. Gibbs knew her. Knew how she placed blame squarely on her own shoulders, no matter the situation. "Nope."

"Gibbs," she said, and leaned as far forward as she could with a freshly-patched hole in her side. "What is wrong with Tony's father?"

He avoided the topic of the plane, or the second plane ride that would be happening right now, but he told her all he knew of Senior's condition. How serious it was. How it was affecting Tony and Tali. What the docs thought of his chances.

When he was done, Ziva closed hers and leaned back into the bench behind her. "It is my fault."

"You aren't the one who hit his head."

"If I had just been more _careful_ , none of this would have happened," she went on, heedless of his words. "None of those people would be dead. Tony's father would not be in a coma. Tony and Tali would still be alright. I sho—"

"Hey!"

Ziva started, looking back to Gibbs as if she had forgotten he was there.

"Stop. You can't change what happened. It's over. Figure out how to move forward."

"There are a _lot_ of dead bodies behind me, Gibbs," she said. "You saw four of them this morning. They are a _fraction_ of the ones I am responsible for. The Ritz-Carlton was simply the most death in one place."

Gibbs' eye twitched, recognizing that familiar, self-hating tone at the same moment his mind registered her words. What happened to her in these last months? "You order terrorist attacks?"

"No."

"Then you aren't responsible. You're alive."

Ziva sighed, closing her eyes and leaning her head back. "The faces I see when I close my eyes disagree, Gibbs."

Gibbs frowned, but knew he had to let it go for now. In her current state, the more he pushed her, the more she'd retreat. Instead, he asked the question he'd wanted to ask her from the moment Abby confirmed she was alive: "What happened?"

Ziva opened her eyes and looked at him. "To what?"

"To you."

She smiled grimly, a humorless chuckle escaping her throat. "Where should I start?"

"Diana."

"We were friends in school, when I was very young. Close friends. Part of that came from my father inviting her parents over so often—his politics in play even then. Most of it was just us. We got along, Gibbs. I was devastated when she had to leave. She and I kept in contact until our teens, then our futures beckoned. We hadn't spoken in nearly fifteen years when she called me."

Gibbs finished his bourbon, then filled it again a quarter way up. "What happened after that call from the restaurant?"

"I took her to my house," Ziva said, holding out her own jar for a small refill. She didn't look surprised Gibbs knew about the call. "She had been shot twice. Once in the shoulder, once in the side. The one in her shoulder was a through-and-through, but I had to remove the one in her side. She screamed a lot. I tried to keep Tali busy with a game outside, but…"

She trailed off. Gibbs saw the road her mind was going back down: her daughter. The hurt Tali had been through, both while Ziva was there and when she was not. "You didn't have enough supplies to treat her injuries," Gibbs said, bringing her back.

"No," Ziva said, eyes snapping back to the present. "I used all I had, then I had to improvise."

"Homemade kit."

She chuckled. "Diana found it… Lacking in pain management. But it helped her. Got her just beyond that threshold from slow death to slow recovery." She finished the last of her bourbon, then froze, her eyes distant, unmoving. Focused on a narrow point only she could see.

Gibbs had seen that look before. Many times, in fact. Her almost sixth sense for danger. And a second later, he knew why it went off.

There was a car in the street, but there was no sound of an engine. No one on his street had an electric. That meant the vehicle was coasting. Using its weight and momentum to bring it the final leg of the journey to its destination. His gut tensed. There was only one reason for that.

Maintaining stealth.

"Expecting visitors, Gibbs?" Ziva asked. Her voice was cold, despite the joke.

"No."

* * *

Artur Popov was familiar with the routine.

Get a call. Grab a gun. Shoot a person. Get paid. That was the routine. The formula. And that formula had been his life from the age of sixteen, when he finally went from being a nobody Shestyorka, to a Bratok, then—later—from Bratok to _Avtoritet_ —Authority. He was someone, now. Someone others feared. Hated. Loved. Exactly what depended on the other.

Today, someone was going to fear him. At least for a little while.

"Engine off," he ordered the driver of the SUV, one of his Brigade of three men not including himself. It was small for a Brigade, but that was intentional. They were a special Brigade. Trained by very dangerous people to become very dangerous themselves. One of his men was worth three normal _Brodyag_.

Alexi turned off the SUV's engine, letting the large vehicle roll down the road in relative silence. Behind him, Artur heard one of his men load a magazine into a SP89—a civilian variant of the widely-used MP5K. Artur was impartial to the German people, but damn if they didn't know how to make a good gun.

"That house, there," Artur said, pointing to the target house. He spoke his native tongue with a Central accent, unlike the Northern accents of his Brigade. Some would have looked down on them for that, but Artur knew better.

He wasn't sure who they were supposed to kill; details had been given hastily by the Sovietnik above Artur's Brigade and three other, standard Brigades. All they knew was there was someone inside the house that needed to die, and that this someone had killed four men like him already today. But they had been American, and like Americans, they hadn't prepared for someone prepared for them.

He had.

That was why everyone had body armor, a handgun, and an SP89 with two spare clips of 9×19mm Parabellum. Each SP89 had been modified for full-auto fire. An easy process, if one knew the right person. They would not going to be discrete, but the Sovietnik had given him freedom to fulfill the contract—a rare and valuable one, as Death's contracts always were—as he saw fit.

The SUV rolled to a stop in the target house's driveway, right behind an American car with a dark paint job. Probably a piece of junk. Anything American-made tended to be.

Alexi put the vehicle in park, and Artur turned back to his Brigade. "Remember what happened to the Americans earlier today," he said. "Whatever's in that house, you kill."

"Understood," they said, each in their own way.

"Let's go."

They all filed out of the SUV. Artur used a hand signal to send Alexi and Vladimir to the back door, while he and Dmitriy went for the front.

"Blueprints show stairs straight ahead," Artur said to Dmitriy, the youngest of his Brigade. "Clear your corners to the left and join me up there. Understand?"

"Yes."

He and Dmitry flanked the front door. He looked at Dmitry to make sure he was ready. The younger man was. Artur moved away from the wall, then kicked in the door.

It gave more easily than it should have. Perhaps it had been unlocked. Either way, splinters of wood from the doorframe flew inward, shattered from the impact of his heavy boot. Dmitry went in first, SP89 up and ready to fire. Artur went in after.

There was little on the right; just a closet. Artur it open and found it empty save two coats and a suit. He turned, weapon still up, and started climbing the stairs. Out of his peripherals, he saw Dmitriy move to follow him as Alexi and Vladimir sweeped the kitchen. It was a small house, as almost all houses in this accursed American city were.

They reached the second floor. There was a single hallway lined with several doors. None of the doors were open. Someone could have been hiding in any one of the rooms, ready to ambush them. Artur wouldn't have that.

He gestured for Dmitriy to take a door at one side of the hallway, while he took another. When Dmitriy got into position, Artur kicked in the door in front of him. The sound of heavy boots slamming into wooden doors was loud in the confined space of the second floor, but Artur didn't let it distract him. He entered the room.

It was a barren room. No pictures on the walls. No clothes on the floor. No trash. No one in sight. The furniture was covered up in plastic, as if to preserve it.

The same was true with the second room he entered. And the next. And the last one, too. All rooms that, once, had served different purposes. Now, left alone. Covered. Neither he nor Dmitriy found anyone present.

Had they been given the wrong house?

"Clear," Artur reluctantly called out from the last room he entered, a child's room, then walked into the main hallway.

"Clear," Dmitriy repeated from the floor's shared bathroom. He reentered the main hallway at the same time Artur did. "Now what?"

"Regroup."

They went back down the stairs—weapons at sling ready, since no shots had been fired or calls made from the others—and entered the living room once again. The room was bare, much like the upstairs. A couch. An old television. A fireplace. The owner must be a simple person. Artur thought there weren't people like that in this country.

Artur looked to the kitchen. The others weren't there, and the door leading down to the basement was slightly ajar. "Alexi, Vladimir—get up here!" He called.

There was no response.

Artur was back on edge immediately. Gone was the calm safety of standing, armed, inside an empty house. Gone was the frustration of not finding a target. Back in place was the razor-sharp focus of an experienced killer.

He gestured Dmitriy to his side, and, as one, they advanced on the basement door, weapons up. When they were at the door, Artur—with Dmitriy positioned just to the side where the door would open—reached out for the handle.

That was when Dmitriy's head exploded.

The shot was quieter than a shot should have been, but still rang in Artur's ear. A silenced, sub-sonic round, fired from the crack in the door. Blood and brain matter and skull fragments splattered across the floor and wall behind them, and Dmitriy fell without so much as a sound. The look of tense preparation remained on his unmoving face, even as the life left his eyes.

Artur went to fire his SP89 through the door, but he didn't get a chance to. Something hit him in the back of the head. Hard. Another, quiet-loud _pop_ sounded out. He saw stars and fell, collapsing in a heap right next to the still-forming pool of Dmitriy's blood.

Muddied voices called out to each other. He felt his weapon pulled away from him, followed quickly by his handgun and the knife Artur kept strapped to his boot. He felt something cold and metallic placed on his hands.

He regained his vision. There was woman to the side, though Artur's attention was grabbed by a man standing over him, a handgun pointed down at his face face. The man was old, Artur could see, and not overly tall or well-built, but the look in his eyes was one Artur had seen in few others.

Dangerous. Not to others. Not normally. No, these were the eyes of a man who was dangerous to those who threatened him.

Those dangerous eyes stared at him coldly as he came to. An old warrior daring a younger one to challenge him. Then he spoke, "I don't recall inviting you."

* * *

Law enforcement responded quickly.

One of his neighbors had seen the men when they stopped in the driveway. One look at their getup and weapons was enough for anyone to know they didn't belong. In less than five minutes, four separate police cruisers had arrived, each carrying a pair of officers ready to face armed assailants. After they'd found him alive and well, and most of the assailants less than so—courtesy of Ziva's near-superhuman aim—they stuck around to keep the neighbors back and the scene untouched until investigators arrived.

That took another fifteen minutes. Two cars from Metro, two from NCIS. NCIS brought the only truck for the bodies.

Gibbs stood in the living room, watching the investigators take pictures, evidence, and the dead away. Two separate Investigators—one from NCIS, another from Metro—took his statement and the statement of the neighbor who called 9-1-1. Ziva stayed in her seat in the corner with her back to the wall, staring vacantly ahead, her eyes blank, silenced handgun in an evidence bag. Gibbs had kept all but a medic with actual bandages from approaching her.

She hadn't said anything since he confirmed he wasn't expecting company. She'd only acted. He'd only followed her example. No plans had been discussed as they prepared for the gunmen. No ideas, no commands. Ziva had wordlessly walked under the basement stairs; he'd followed. She'd headshot both of them without batting an eye. Headshot the third man just as easily. She would have killed the last one, if he—having seen her mindset—hadn't taken the initiative and positioned himself in the empty kitchen pantry.

Even then, knowing he was in the kitchen, she'd almost hit the last man through the door.

Gibbs turned back to look at Ziva. She didn't give an indication she noticed him. She just kept staring ahead, her eyes unseeing, her face vacant of expression. If hadn't been able to see her breathing, he'd have thought she was dead.

This wasn't the Ziva he remembered leaving NCIS to live a quiet life in the Israeli country. This was the Ziva he hadn't seen before. Not really. This was the cold Mossad assassin. The huntress. The woman who shot first and never missed. Only she was fractured. Because even stone—as resilient, rough, and strong as it was—had a breaking point. A limit. She'd been stretched to hers.

But by what?

"Ziva," he said.

She blinked, but otherwise gave no sign she heard him.

"Probie!"

His heightened voice drew a few looks, but he didn't care. Ziva blinked again, her eyes snapping into focus. She looked right, then left, searching for threats. Then she looked at him. "Yes?"

"You good?"

"Yes."

Gibbs stared.

Ziva stared back.

He could see the look in her eyes. The tension in her body. She was a wound up coil, ready to spring. The stress of the day was getting to her. The people around her were making her nervous. She was struggling just to remain motionless. This wasn't the time.

Gibbs straightened and returned to his guard duty. His team arrived not long after that.

Tim came in first, wearing his suit since he'd come from the Navy Yard. He walked through the door with an urgent spring to his step, already looking in Gibbs' direction. Then he saw Ziva sitting in the corner, and stopped dead. The urgency in his step vanished. The concern in his eyes faded. He looked at Ziva with wide eyes. Believing what they saw but still processing it. At last, he spoke.

"Hey."

"Hello, McGee."

"You're… You're really here." He smiled, but didn't approach. Gibbs knew McGee would have seen the look in Ziva's eyes. He was a good Agent, and a better friend to those he cared about. He'd know what it meant, and that close contact wasn't something she needed right now.

"Somewhat," Ziva said.

Bishop and Torres came in at that, wearing her gear. Recognition entered Bishop's eyes when they landed on Ziva. Not one stemmed from a personal relationship, but from seeing someone else's face on a computer screen for hours upon hours at a time. Gibbs saw nothing in Torres' eyes.

"So this is where you went after this morning," Bishop said.

Gibbs was facing the wrong direction, but he could feel Ziva staring at Bishop.

"Oh, right. Sorry," Bishop said, offering a slight smile that didn't quite hide the self-depreciation from her eyes. That would be her blaming herself for a mistake. "I'm Ellie Bishop."

"My replacement," Ziva said, blankly.

"Yes, well—you left."

"I did." Gibbs felt Ziva's gaze move to Torres. "I do not know you."

"Nick Torres." To his credit, Torres held Ziva's look. Barely. His eyes flicked to Gibbs, and in that moment Gibbs knew the younger man wanted nothing to do with Ziva. Survival instinct, honed sharply by Agents who went undercover. It was usually triggered by meeting a more dangerous person. "I'm new."

"Very new. You have the look of an eel out of water."

"Fish," McGee said. "Expression is fish."

"Same difference." Ziva stood up, wincing at the movement and putting a hand to her side, where a fresh bandage now covered her gunshot wound. He moved to assist her, but she waved him off. "I am fine, Gibbs. Or I will be, when we are safe."

Gibbs noted her use of that word. Safe. A word that carried an emotional connotation, unlike a similar word like _secure_. She felt trapped in his house. He did, too.

"McGee," he said, looking back to his Senior Field Agent. "Quinn back at NCIS?"

"Stayed behind to talk to the Russian you caught," McGee confirmed.

"Take Ziva in your car, then. We're heading back."

"What about Saunders' apartment?" Bishop asked.

"We only had time to search the living room when we got this call," Torres added.

"It can wait," Gibbs said, nodding to McGee.

"Come on," McGee said to Ziva, smiling again. "I picked up tea on the way over."

"Mint?"

"Green. All I could get on short notice."

"It will do."

Ziva and McGee exited the house first, then Torres and Bishop. Gibbs took up the rear. He heard them talking to each other. Torres and Bishop in normal tones; McGee and Ziva in quiet, intimate ones. Two new teammates contrasting with the reunion of two close friends.

They entered their respective vehicles—parked at the curb—and started the drive back. Gibbs got into his own, pulled out of the driveway, and followed. He accelerated to catch up, then slowed down so that he was behind McGee's car. He was on rearguard. A prime position to block potential threats coming from behind.

He stayed there all the way back to NCIS.

* * *

The man in the suit woke up.

He'd slept for three hours. The maximum amount of rest he allowed himself per day. Any more and his highest-level Operatives would be without direction. If they were without, so, too, would the lower Operatives below them. And so on and so forth, until nothing got done.

He did not tolerate such inefficiency.

The man showered, ate, and dressed into a new suit. He made his way out into the still-dark Tel Aviv morning sky, members of his personal guard in tow, a cleaning crew already waiting to the side to wipe any trace the man had left behind in the house.

A motorcade of black Land Rovers were waiting outside. Each had diplomatic plates that would be changed whenever they crossed a national border. Each was identical, and each was rated to withstand chemical, electrical, and biological attacks along with the standard bullets, mines, and shaped charges. A suite of electronic sensors ensured that each vehicle constantly painted an image of its surroundings, much like most modern jet fighters did while flying at supersonic speeds. A different suite of electronics provided additional security to all phone and internet signals within a certain radius.

The man climbed into the Land Rover in the center of the convoy. There was a suitcase there. He opened it. Inside, in foam holders, were his phones for the day. The first call would be due soon.

One of his guards closed his door and climbed into the front passenger seat, leaving the man alone in the back. The convoy set out soon after, all obeying traffic laws, and all holding at least three men who once belonged to a Special Forces unit of their respective country.

The first call of the day arrived three minutes into their journey to the airstrip. The man answered. _"Representatives from black-listed groups have reached out. They seek ammunition and explosives."_ The Operative spoke Arabic with a Saudi accent.

" _Type and grade?"_

" _7.62×51mm NATO for the ammunition. C4 is their requested material."_

" _Approve the sale. ¢22 per round, $325 per kilo."_

" _As you wish, Almawt."_

The man in the suit hung up the phone, but didn't destroy it. No place to do that in the SUV. Instead, he simply disconnected its battery and placed it to the side. A lower Operative would dispose of it later.

Another phone rang. The man answered. _"The scouts are in place."_ It was the same American Operative that had contacted him twice in the last day.

"What airports?"

" _Two civilian, one military. The most likely routes they will take to NCIS."_

"And the Target?"

The Operative said nothing.

The man's eye twitched. "The contractors failed."

" _Yes, Death. Three are dead. The last is in custody at NCIS."_

"Options?"

" _Few. We have only one Operative within the building. A desk worker. Not suited for WET work."_

Now it was the man's turn to fall silent. He sat in his seat, staring ahead as the motorcade rolled through the security gate leading to the tarmac and continued to the civilian hangar. The Target was still alive, in spite of all attempts to pacify her. Outside contractors. WET squads. Operatives. All had failed. Ziva David continued to be a threat. He could no longer abide by that. Only one option remained.

If you wanted something done right…

"Change of plans. Enact a Decree."

There was a pause from the Operative. A silence that came from genuine surprise. _"Understood. We will prepare for your arrival, Death."_

* * *

 **This wasn't as fast-paced as I wanted it to be, and I feel it didn't advance the plot forward enough. At the same time, I couldn't gloss over a reunion with Ziva. I just hope the chapter, despite not being filled with as much plot movement as the others, was an entertaining read.**

 **The credit song for this chapter is "The Hit House - Propellant" Some may recognize this one from a trailer to Game of Thrones, but I found it fit with the ending scene. It has an increasingly intense feel to it, which, in my opinion, fits with the tone I attempted to establish with the chapter's final line.**

 **Thank you all for reading. If you enjoyed reading, please share or recommend this to a friend or friends. And if you _really_ enjoyed reading, please leave a comment. They are the lifeblood of all writers, and they do not take long to leave.**

 **See you soon.**


	9. Chapter 9

**So much for records. I really don't understand how I fell so far out of habit of writing. This update took _way_ too long, and it's one of four stories I should be updating more frequently. I do apologize for taking so long in getting this out. Hopefully you all enjoy it!**

 **As usual, you people are awesome. Thank you so much for all the reviews and favorites and follows!**

 **Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.**

* * *

The phone on his cabinet rang.

Fyodor Orlov stiffened, lowering his mid-day drink of vodka. That phone was on a separate line. A secure one. It was not for average business, or to be ignored when it rang.

Even so, he wanted to.

He knew who would be on the other end. He knew the failure of Artur's Brigade could mean consequences for him. But if he ignored the call, those consequences would be far worse.

Fyodor placed his drink on the desk, then stood and moved to the ringing phone, his footsteps echoing on the rich wooden floor of the den of his private residence. He picked it up on the third ring. "Hello," he said flatly, in English.

The American voice on the other end of the line was equally flat as it said, _"A Decree of silence has been Enacted."_

The line clicked dead.

A… A _Decree_? Death was coming? Here, in Washington? In the twenty-three years he had been Pakhan of Washington, Fyodor had never heard of a Decree being Enacted in the United States. Now one had been Enacted in the capital.

This was _not good_.

"Vadim," he called out, this time in his mother tongue.

Ten seconds later, a younger man appeared at the office door. He was bald, and four inches taller than Fyodor's six-one frame. His dark brown eyes promised pain to those that offended him. "Sir?" Vadim— head of his Obshchak, or Security Group—asked, his deep voice formal and respectful.

"Shut _everything_ down. All trades. All shipments. All contracts. I don't want _anyone_ attracting attention for _any_ reason."

Vadim stared at him, his expressionless look a question all itself.

"There's been a Decree."

The question vanished. A trace of discomfort entered his dangerous eyes. "This will be done," Vadim said, and went to close the door.

"And, Vadim."

His Obshchak paused and looked back to him.

"Perhaps it's time to see this country's forests."

"I will prepare the estate for your extended stay." Vadim left the room.

After he had, Fyodor went back to his desk, drank his vodka, and set about preparing to leave.

Whatever had brought Death to Washington, whatever it was Death planned to do, Fyodor had _no_ intention of being there when they arrived.

* * *

The call spread throughout the city.

From gang hideouts, to mob establishments, to drug dens, to cyber crime caves, phones rang. Those phones were answered, and each time, the same words were spoken by a flat voice.

" _A Decree of silence has been Enacted."_

Those who understood the words spoken, halted illegal activity without hesitation or complaint. Plans months in the making were put on hold until further notice. Bars and restaurants and clubs were closed without explanation given to their patrons. Dark web chat rooms went offline. Streets commonly seen as _territory_ were cleared and emptied. The command of Silence was obeyed.

Those who did not understand—those that had risen to their position of authority too quickly and improperly—dismissed what they were told. They attempted to take advantage of the perceived weakness they saw from rivals. The command of Silence was ignored.

Examples were swiftly and cleanly made.

Those who did not understand, understood. Corrections were made. The command of Silence was obeyed.

The path was made clear for Death.

* * *

"What's your name?"

That simple question was met with silence. The Russian hitman stared straight ahead, ignoring Quinn, one of his fingers regularly tapping against the table in a steady, drumming beat. A disruptive tactic meant to knock her off her game, distract her. Annoy her _just enough_ that her interrogative flow was interrupted.

It hadn't worked. But then again, she hadn't gotten anything out of him. Maybe it was.

Quinn waited a beat for the dark-haired man to answer. He didn't. She tried again. "I can't help you if I don't know who you are."

The man blinked slowly, eyes blank and void of expression. His finger tapped away, filling the silence where an interrogation should have been taking place. Trying to distract her.

Time to try something else. "Do you know where you'll be sent, if you don't cooperate?"

He kept tapping.

"Contract killing. Assassination. Attempted murder. Breaking and entering. Possession of illegal firearms. That's not including all the other crimes I'm sure your fingerprints are going to lead us to."

He blinked once. Said nothing. Kept tapping.

"Without accounting for any of the criminal charges we're _certain_ are coming, you're looking at 50 years behind bars. And that's if you're lucky. If you aren't, and my boss comes in here, you're looking at a double life sentence at ADX."

 _That_ got a response out of him. A small one, just a slight tightening of the eyes, a slight increase in the force of the tapping. Even the hardore feared the most secure prison ever conceived.

"And, of course, that's assuming you don't have any connections we deem a threat to national security. People like you meet all kinds of other people. Customers. Contacts. Victims. Sometimes even _you_ don't know who you know."

That got another rise. The same as the last, and even a little smaller. He saw the Gitmo bluff. She needed another tactic change.

"You know, I could talk to the judge. Get them to go easy on you. But only if you tell me who hired you."

The tapping stopped. His gaze went directly to her for the first time. She thought she saw something in those hard eyes of his. An emotion. A _reaction_. Fear. A few like very few she had seen in her life.

Then he said the one word she dreaded the most. It came out in broken, accented English, but it was unmistakable: "Lawyer."

In one last effort to save her interrogation, she tried again, "Who told you to go into that house?"

"Lawyer!"

Quinn sat up straight, picked up her things. "We'll get you one. Then we're going to charge you with everything we can think of."

Then she left the room.

* * *

Gibbs watched it all from the observation room next door.

This Russian was a tough case. Mafia-types tended to be. More money, better teachers. But everyone, no matter how well-prepared they were, had a weakness. It seemed Quinn had found it by asking about his boss.

Now they had to find out why.

The door opened behind him. Quinn stepped up next to him a second later. "Sorry, Gibbs. I blew it."

"Nope," he said. "He was just ready for you. Happens."

"We gettin' him a lawyer?"

"It's the law. Unless he has ties to terrorists."

Quinn seemed to get the message. She was a quick study. "I'll call some buddies in the FBI. See if there's any Russians who've been in bed with anyone on a terror watch list."

"You do that. I'll be in the conference room."

He and Quinn left the observation room at the same time, moving in different directions. She went to make whatever calls she had to, while he returned to the Squadroom, ascended the stairs, and went to the conference room.

Vance and Ziva were already there, sitting across from each other, looking tense but far from uncomfortable. Friendly, even. Just not in the way she and McGee had been before. Such was the nature of any friendship between two people who wielded unequal power.

"—been too long since we could talk in person," Vance was saying as Gibbs entered. "I say this as both Director of NCIS and my own personal opinion: it's good to see you again, Ziva David."

Ziva chuckled. "You do not mean that fully, Director."

"I do," Leon said. "Though I confess that your actions today have kept me busy."

"You mean they have given you a headshake."

"Ache. And no. I meant _busy_. Busy defending you, keeping the right people in the loop, directing the wrong people to the waiting room. Nothing unexpected. If I were upset, I'd have let you know, David. I owe my people honesty."

Ziva was silent for a moment, gazing at Leon with a soft smile. "Thank you, Director."

"Don't thank me yet," Leon said. "I still haven't heard about what you've gotten yourself into. Which we should ask her about, Agent Gibbs."

A corner of Gibbs' mouth twitched upward, despite the events of the day. He hadn't made a sound as he entered, and Vance had never looked to the door. Probably caught the quick eye-flick Ziva had sent his way.

He fully entered the room and stopped behind Vance, gazing at Ziva expectantly but calmly.

"You know you _can_ sit, Gibbs," Vance said, glancing back.

Gibbs shrugged. "Like to stand."

Vance looked back to Ziva. "Gibbs told me what you shared before. What happened the night of the attack?"

Ziva sighed, what little light she allowed in her eyes fading. "I did what I could for Diana. I kept asking her what she had gotten into, but she deflected. Gave quarter answers."

"Half answers," Gibbs said.

"Same difference. She would not tell me. So, after managed to fall asleep late in the night, I went through her possessions. There I found the flash drive. I thought of plugging it into my computer, but I have seen McGee track many people who do something as simple as that. So I went outside to place a call."

"Mossad," Vance guessed.

"You."

Gibbs raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch. He suspected Vance wore an identical expression, but with more _expression_ in it.

"Diana was an American citizen, and one in obvious mortal danger," Ziva explained. "That left me with several options. First was the CIA, but I do not know many who work there, and I know far fewer whom I trust. Second was the FBI, but again I do not have any significant contacts among them. That left you. I knew you would help."

Vance nodded, the closest to a thank you he'd allow himself. Gibbs knew how he worked in this setting. "We would have at least coordinated. But we didn't get the chance."

At that, Gibbs saw Ziva's eyes grow distant. A little more dull and blank. "No, you did not. The mortar hit just as I stepped outside. What happened after that is… A blur. I cannot recall details for a long time. The next I am aware, Tali is outside, crying, while I am running for the hill with my weapon in hand."

"You ran on instinct," Gibbs said. "Got Tali out and went after the mortar position."

"But was that Mossad's training or my own desire?"

"Both," Vance said. "Hell hath no fury like an angry mother. Especially one trained in black operations."

That got a twitch from the corner of Ziva's mouth. It returned to a flat line on her next statement: "I went after the attacker. He evaded me for nearly two hours, but I caught him. Got him to talk. Found out why my home was targeted. Found out both myself _and_ Diana had been targets assigned from different parties. As soon as I heard that, I knew."

"Knew what?" Vance asked.

"That I could not return home. That any move I made would draw danger to those close to me. I…" Her voice faltered, face betraying the emotions she was so good at holding back. "... I left. I left everything. Left my _child_."

Gibbs felt his gut tighten. Not from suspicion; from sympathy. Every parent felt guilt when they left without their child. He felt it every time he deployed, leaving Shannon and Kelly behind.

At least Ziva still had Tali.

Vance let Ziva take a few moments to gather herself, then asked the big question: "What forced you to leave?"

Ziva took a breath before staring at the wall, her eyes seeing something that wasn't there. "Death."

Gibbs' eye twitched along with his gut. "Death?"

"That is their name. Or rather, the only name known by those I have encountered. Whoever they are, their reach and resources are… Formidable."

His gut was still talking to him. Death. Sounded cliché. But the name wasn't what mattered. Capabilities did. And from how Ziva spoke, Death was _very_ capable.

So how come Gibbs hadn't heard of them?

"They're the ones responsible for the attack on the Ritz-Carlton in Tel Aviv?" Vance asked.

"No," she said, slowly. Painfully. As if that one word tore at her throat.

"Then who?"

"Me."

Gibbs gut clenched. He knew what she was going to say. "David…"

"If I had not lost my ability to stomach old contacts dying because they spoke to me, if I had not grown tired of seeing _villages_ burning because I slept in their gutter the previous night." Her voice broke, her eyes watering. She took a long pause and looked to the side, taking one deep breath, then a second. Then she mastered herself. "If I had not grown weak, if I had not tried to smuggle the drive back to you, no one at that hotel would be dead."

As much as Gibbs hated to admit, she wasn't wrong. But the past couldn't be changed, and for all they knew, her keeping the drive could have led to something even worse. "You didn't give the order."

"But I was stupid. Moronic. _Arrogant_. I made a mistake that tipped my hand. I shifted their crosshairs from my head to theirs. I made them _targets_. I made my _child_ a _target_." Her voice was bitter now. Furious. Angry at herself. Angry at anyone who tried to convince her otherwise.

Gibbs had to let it go. It hurt him like a knife to the gut, but he wasn't going to get through to her. He didn't need his gut to see that.

"Gibbs," Vance said, standing up from his seat. "A word."

Seemed Vance had seen the same.

Gibbs followed Leon out of the room, closing the door behind him.

"I need you to step out of this." Straight to the point.

"She's one of mine, Leon."

"You're too close. As she's revealing information, you're having her spend half her time denying what you say."

Gibbs knew, in both his gut and his mind, that Vance was right. He didn't like it. "Three times we've lost her, Leon. I'm not going to stand by and lose her a fourth time to guilt."

"Not saying you should," Vance said. "But we need answers. This is the best way we can get them from her. Working on her self-esteem can wait."

Gibbs' eye twitched.

"You've been giving me that look a lot recently. Stop. I don't like this any more than you do. After all, she is one of _mine_."

That quelled the worst of Gibbs' protective fire. He still didn't like being left out of the room, but it had to be done. Maybe she would be more receptive to his counterpoints after she got out. He stepped to the side, nodding to the door. "Director."

"Gibbs." Vance returned the nod, then re-entered the conference room. He shut the door behind him. Shutting Gibbs out. Blocking him from countering Ziva's self-loathing remarks.

His eye twitched. He didn't like it.

He needed coffee.

He made his way back to the Squadroom, knowing coffee could wait another few minutes. When he approached the Bullpen, he saw his team gathered in front of one of the main screens. They dispersed when they noticed him. Tim had probably hacked the conference room feed.

"Something interesting?" He asked, making his way to his desk.

"Nope," said Bishop.

"Not a thing, Boss," said McGee.

"Just standing," Torres added.

Their words came too quickly to have been genuine.

Gibbs hummed, checked his email. As usual, nothing important was in his inbox, but McGee's habits had rubbed off on him. "Listen up: new assignment."

"Another one?" Bishop asked, a slight tone of incredulity in her voice. "We already have two major cases and multiple leads to follow."

Gibbs gave her a look.

"Right. Sorry. Need coffee. New assignment?"

"A name," he said. "Death."

"Death?" Torres asked, failing to contain a grin. "Someone's using _that_ as a name? Sounds like something out of a dumb movie."

Gibbs gave him a look, too, and the younger man fell silent. The young laugh while the old worry, Gibbs thought. Someday, Torres would be old, and understand that names meant nothing. Just like DiNozzo eventually did.

"So, we're looking for criminals who go by a one-word alias?" McGee asked, curious but confused. Gibbs didn't blame him.

"Start with that. Expand everywhere else. Ziva claims someone by the name of Death is behind the Ritz-Carlton attack. Find out if there's anything to it."

"I'll take arms dealers and terrorists," Bishop said.

"I'll take hackers and cyber criminals," McGee said.

"I'll… Keep standing?" Torres offered, shrugging.

Gibbs gave him a look.

Torres caught on after a second. "I'll check in with some… Friends. Maybe they've heard something." He walked out of the Bullpen, heading for the main elevator.

Has potential, Gibbs thought. Needs to catch on quicker.

Gibbs took a moment to watch his team work, then went for the secondary elevator. Abby had something.

* * *

He arrived at Abby's lab in under two minutes. When he got there, the main screen was displaying photos of the men who had attacked he and Ziva. Three were taken in autopsy, while the last had been taken shortly after the lone survivor arrived for questioning.

Abby herself was at her computer, though as he stepped into the room, she picked up her phone and speed-dialed a number.

His own phone rang half a second later. He ignored it. "Got something, Abbs?"

Abby turned to him, phone still to her ear, and stared at him with narrowed eyes. "I almost beat you," she said, hanging up her phone with a faux scowl.

"Whadda got?"

"First thing's first." She crossed the space between them and placed her hands against his shoulders. "Are you okay?"

"Fine, Abbs."

She narrowed her eyes. "People just broke into your house, Gibbs. They broke into your house and tried to _kill you_ and Ziva. People aren't fine with that."

"Abby," he said, a little firmer this time. "I'm fine."

"Good." With that, she hugged him tightly. He hugged her back. "Because I was _so_ _scared_ when I heard about your house? Like, what if you were hurt, or shot, or killed? Would I have known right away? And what about Ziva? She was already shot. What if she were hit again, or stabbed or, blown up, or suffocated? She _just_ got here! Oh, I should have been upstairs to welcome her back..."

"Abbs." Gently, he pushed her back, holding her at arms length. "It's okay. We're fine."

"You say that, but what about Ziva, Gibbs?"

"She's getting along as well as she can."

"So not good."

Gibbs didn't confirm or deny that.

Abby became downcast. "Oh, now I _really_ wish I had been upstairs. I should have walked away from this. I _needed_ to. Why didn't I? I owe her, like, the biggest hug _ever_. Maybe I should head up to the conference room."

"Abbs," he cut in gently.

"Right," she said with a nod, yet another look—determination, this time—gracing her friendly face. "Case. Job. Hugs later. Okay. So those faces on screen are your home invaders, who you already know. Well, partially; it's been strangely difficult to find out who they really are, or were. Mostly were. Ziva's a _really_ good shot."

"Abbs."

"Patience, Gibbs." She turned and walked to the table in the center of the room. Evidence bags containing everything the hitmen had on them on it, nearly blocking view of its metal surface. She reached into the mess of evidence and produced their bagged phones. Each phone was basic and cheap, even by Gibbs' standards. "After going through the logs on these, I can safely say these guys are—mostly were—pros, just like the team with our bad Marine. Only a little _better_. There is not one personal item on them. Nothing with names. Nothing connected to any accounts. And they deleted everything from their phones. And the only contacts they had programmed are each other."

"But you found something anyway."

"Oh, you know me too well, Gibbs." She returned to her computer, bringing up call logs overtop the images of the three dead and one living hitmen. "These are all the calls those phones received or made over their lifetimes. As you can clearly see, they only called each other. Probably to brag about kills or something bad guy-ish like that. I wonder if they hung out with Caine at all? Swapped murder stories or something. But that's beside the point, because there's an outlier in this group."

She highlighted the logs from the man they had in Interrogation. Gibbs knew none of the numbers, but his trained eyes saw the same number appear nearly fifteen times in the phone's last thirty calls. "Lot of calls to one number," he said.

"More than _half_ of _all_ calls placed by him. Either he has a girlfriend, or he's talking to his boss."

"You get a name from the second number?"

"Led to another burner phone, but I did find _something_." She brought up a text message. It had Gibbs' address in it, proceeded by a line of Russian text that Gibbs read as:

 _New target for you at this address. No restrictions. Death will pay extra for speed._

Death.

There was that name again. First from Ziva. Now from the Russians hired to kill her. Surely, if they dug deep enough through their phones, the first hit team sent after her as well. And Thanatos was the personification of death in Greek mythology. Diana Woods went to great lengths to hide _mention_ of Thanatos Industries.

Rule #39.

This figure, this Death, really _was_ behind everything. Someone, somewhere, wielded incredible influence in the world's underbelly. Someone who was known to criminals, and completely _unknown_ to NCIS.

The implications behind that were frightening.

"Where was that phone when they sent that message?" Gibbs asked, focusing on the present.

Abby smiled, and wordlessly lifted up a small piece of paper.

Always trying to stay one step ahead, Gibbs thought as he grabbed the offered note and made for the door. "That's good work, Abby."

"Hey!" Gibbs paused and turned back.

Abby was looking at him with exasperated offense, her hands on her hips, eyebrows raised. "Forgetting something?"

Gibbs stepped over and placed a kiss on her forehead. "Good work."

"Thanks, but I was actually asking for a Caf-Pow."

He offered her a tiny smile, then left the room.

Quinn was probably done with her contacts. Maybe she was up for a drive.

* * *

He returned to the Bullpen a minute later. Bishop and McGee were still in place, hard at work on their computers and phones. Quinn was also there, holding a folder. She looked at him as soon as he entered the Bullpen. "Gibbs."

"Got something?" He asked. Maybe the drive could wait.

"Depends on how you look at it." She handed him the folder.

Gibbs opened it. It contained a series of surveillance photographs focused on a number of different individuals. He didn't recognize most of them, but some faces were familiar to him. Gang leaders. High-level members of organized crime families and clans. Not the type to mess with.

"Potential bosses for our Russian in Interrogation?"

"And all already under investigation by Metro and the FBI for every crime in the book. But here's the thing: they're all gone."

Gibbs gave her a look. "What do you mean?"

"Gone," she said. "As in, not in DC. They left the city today."

"All of them?"

"Every one."

Gibbs felt something stir in his gut. A dark, slow-moving object that resembled dread. "Your contacts say why?"

"No idea, but they're scared; my guys _and_ those guys. And these aren't the type of people who scare easily. Something's wrong, Gibbs. Something's _really_ wrong."

His gut agreed. People like these—mobsters, contract killers, dealers—they were fearless right up until they were beaten. Beaten, or they came face-to-face with someone bigger and badder than they were.

What were the odds Death was bigger and badder?

Out of his peripheral, Gibbs saw Vance move into view at the top of the stairs. Gibbs focused on him, and saw how quickly Vance was descending to the Squadroom, his phone glued to his ear, his eyes hard and straight forward.

Gibbs' gut clenched. He knew that look…

"Keep talking to your contacts." Gibbs gave the folder back to Quinn, then moved to meet Vance near the window.

He did moments later. The look Gibbs had seen at a distance was even more intense up close. Rarely had Gibbs seen Leon look like this.

They always led to bad news.

"Gibbs." Leon's voice was quiet and harsh, and bore the severity of disaster. "We have a problem."

* * *

A satellite phone rang next to the man in the suit. He answered. _"The locals have heeded the Decree."_ It was the American Operative again.

"Troublemakers?" The man asked, gazing out his private jet window at the ocean below. They were cruising at 35,000 feet. Too high to see much of any detail. He found the color soothing.

" _A few."_

The man was not surprised to hear that; there were always a few unwise, stubborn upstarts who thought they knew how the world worked. "I assume they are dealt with."

" _Yes, Death."_

"Cleanly?"

" _No trace was left behind."_

The man reached to his left and took a sip of water. "And the Target?"

" _Landed three minutes ago."_

"Are Operatives in place?"

" _Yes."_

"Take him."

* * *

"All I'm saying, DiNozzo, is that you can't look me in the eye and tell me Eastwood wasn't the king of the gritty Western."

"And all I'm saying, is that you can't look _me_ in the eye and tell me Wayne wasn't the king of _the_ Western."

"You mean the king of… Dramatic… Lines."

Tony laughed humorlessly, taking a moment to regain his composure for that sideswipe.

He was on the ground in DC, jet-lagged as all hell and riding in an armored SUV provided by NCIS. The SUV had come with three Agents to act as bodyguards for him and the flashdrive. One of them was a familiar face. Matt-something; Tony forgot his last name. Good guy. Liked to debate movies, which was a welcome distraction from thinking about how terrified his daughter probably was right now.

"When you're the godfather of a genre, tropes start with _you_ ," Tony said, getting back to the argument. "You can't judge the Duke like he's a modern star; he _started_ all the clichés. We judge modern movies because they don't try to start their _own_ clichés."

"But Wayne wasn't even that good an actor!" Matt said. "He played one type of character his entire career, and that character, in personality, was similar to how he acted."

"And how many times did Clint play the comedian?"

"I'm starting to regret coming into work today," said the driver, a woman who'd introduced herself by her last name, Gordon.

"Could be worse," said the front seat passenger, Kurt. "You could be back there with them."

"Okay, okay, we're not getting anywhere," Matt said, ignoring the other two Agents. "Schwarzenegger and Stallone."

Tony went to say Stallone, but then he saw something that set off alarms in his head.

A garbage truck, stationary in an alley. He wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't already been turned in his seat to argue with Matt in the seat next to him. But he did. And all his mind could focus on was one question.

Hadn't pick up for this area been two days ago?

That question was discarded when he looked ahead and saw another garbage truck pulling out from a different alley. He looked back, and saw the first garbage truck doing the same.

Ambush.

"Go!" He shouted, with all the urgency he could. "We're about to get boxed in!"

Gordon realized that one precious second after he had. She accelerated and turned, making for the side of the street the truck had yet to block. But she was _just_ too late.

The garbage truck clipped them as they raced by, and the SUV spun a full 180°, ending up facing the truck. The driver was looking right at them, outfitted in a combat vest.

"Reverse, reverse!" Kurt cried.

"Get us some backup!" Gordon cried, throwing the vehicle in reverse and turning back so she could see where she was going.

"Phone's are jammed!" Matt said, dropping his phone and taking out his sidearm.

They knew where we were going, Tony thought, numb to the situation. They were ready.

They were after him.

The sound of engines caused Tony to snap out of it in time to see Gordon widen her eyes. "Brace!"

There was a deafeningly loud crash and screech of metal just before Tony was thrown back against his seat. Glass from the rear windows flew by him as his head slammed against the headrest hard enough for him to see stars. Airbags went off all over the interior—from the sides, the front, the back—temporary blocking his view of the outside.

A few seconds later, Tony heard a faint, _thump_.

A round object came through the shattered back window landed on the floor right next to his feet. He didn't have time to identify it before it began leaking a thin, vapor-like smoke. Tear gas.

Tony's already-swimming vision became even more blurry. His mouth and nostrils began to burn from the gas. He started coughing. Only once to start, then twice, then three times, until it was all he could do, and his eyes were filled with tears.

More glass shattered. First at the driver's window, then the front passenger's. Then Matt and his. DiNozzo looked up through tear-filled eyes that could barely see straight.

Someone was standing at his window. Someone in a mask and full combat getup, complete with a rifle currently held at the ready. Someone who had three other someones in identical gear at the other windows.

The one in front of Tony grabbed the side of his head and turned his head this way and that, looking down at his wrist, where Tony saw some model of smart watch.

"Got him," the masked person said, voice muffled by the gas mask. He pulled the inside door handle and roughly dragged DiNozzo from the SUV. "Clean up."

As he hit the pavement, DiNozzo saw the masked hostile at the driver's window raise his rifle.

"No!"

His ears nearly burst from the report of the first shot. The long series of shots that followed from both sides of the vehicle did the job. By the time they stopped, Tony could only hear a constant ringing. Could only stare on in horror as blood spattered the inside of the SUV.

No.

Something cold jabbed him in the arm. A needle. A numb feeling began to spread out from the area. He felt his head growing lighter still. And lighter. And lighter. And number and number.

He laid there for several long, agonizing minutes. Repeating in his head what he'd just witnessed. Asking himself questions he already knew he couldn't answer. All while staring up at an expressionless mask.

Then the drug did it's job. The world went dark.

He knew no more.

* * *

 **That final scene, I must say, wasn't how I wanted it to go. I had another, more technical vision for that event. However, sometimes writing doesn't cooperate with you. So it goes.  
**

 **This chapter was a bit more filler-y than I intended, but I found I needed to answer some questions and present some new ones. I do hope I got everyone in character as I wrote this not-quite-as-exciting chapter (barring the ending scene). I also hope I got everyone in character; I really try to get canon characters correct. Feel free to offer thoughts on that if you review.**

 **I will pick a credit song tomorrow. Too late to browse in search of the right song.**

 **Thank you all for reading. If you enjoyed reading, please share or recommend this to a friend or friends. And if you _really_ enjoyed reading, please leave a comment. They are the lifeblood of all writers, and they do not take long to leave.**

 **See you soon.**


End file.
